


Eir'melana

by lyriumlovesong



Series: The Rabbit and The Lion [14]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Addiction, Andraste - Freeform, Angry Cullen, Angst, Attempted Seduction, Awkward Cullen, Bathing/Washing, Blood, Blow Jobs, Boredom, Cassandra Pentaghast's Disgusted Noises, Cassandra is Trying Really Hard, Clan Lavellan - Freeform, Comfort, Confessions, Crisis of Faith, Crying, Cullen Fluff, Cullen Has Issues, Cullen Rutherford Fluff, Cullen Rutherford Smut, Cullen Rutherford has PTSD - Post-Tramatic Stress Disorder, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Dalish Lore, Domestic Fluff, Dorian is a Good Friend, Dragon Age Quest: Protect Clan Lavellan, Drinking, Drinking Games, Drunk Cullen, Drunken Confessions, Drunken Flirting, Drunken Kissing, Drunken Shenanigans, Drunkenness, Elvhen Pantheon, Eventual Smut, Exalted Plains, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Family Loss, Fever, Fever Dreams, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Food, Gift Giving, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Holidays, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Loss, Loss of Parent(s), Lyrium Addiction, Lyrium Withdrawal, Oral Sex, Prayer, Religion, Sad, Sad Cullen, Sad Lavellan, Satinalia, Scars, Skyhold, Smut, Snow, Snowball Fight, Sparring, Sylaise - Freeform, The Chantry, Triggers, Wall Sex, Winter, self-punishment, the maker - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-07-29 04:06:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7669459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyriumlovesong/pseuds/lyriumlovesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freya returns from the Exalted Plains to a snow-covered Skyhold and the man she loves slowly and silently falling apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> This fic heavily references the events in my short fic Wrath of the Lion and a few of my other one-shots. I would highly recommend starting with Wrath at the very least, or you may not know some of the backstory necessary here.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Her fight and fury is fiery._   
>  _Oh, but she loves_   
>  _like sleep to the freezing,_   
>  _sweet and right and merciful._   
>  _I'm all but washed_   
>  _in the tide of her breathing._   
>  _And it's worth it, it's divine._   
>  _I have this some of the time._
> 
> _-Hozier, "Cherry Wine"_

The grounds surrounding Skyhold were still and quiet, a thick layer of snow covering the roofs and ramparts like sparkling white icing on a gingerbread castle. Huge flakes floated softly down from the clouds, drifting to and fro in the chilly breeze blowing through the mountains.

Inside the keep, servants and the soldiers not on watch duty had gathered together in corners with hot drinks. Fires roared in every grate, and lanterns in bright colors had been hung to celebrate the oncoming holiday.

Cullen’s mug of tea had long since gone cold, mostly untouched on the surface of the war table as he and Leliana conferred over recent reports. A loud knock on the door interrupted their discussion.

“Come in!” Leliana called, looking up from the sheaf of paper she had been examining. Cullen’s scout walked in, snow still clinging to his cloak and rapidly melting in the cozy heat of the war room.

“Sister Leliana,” he said, politely nodding at her in greeting as he saluted Cullen. “Commander Rutherford, sir. You wished to know as soon as the riders were spotted. They are approaching the keep now, sir.”

Cullen’s face lit up as he turned to face Leliana.

“They’re early!” he exclaimed, looking like a child who’d just been told he could have cake for dinner.

She smiled back.

“This can all wait,” she told him. “We should include the Inquisitor in these discussions, anyway. We’ll reconvene tomorrow after she’s had some time to rest. I’ll let Josephine know they’re back, you go give her a warm welcome. Doubtless she’ll need it.”

Cullen didn’t wait for further encouragement. He cast the stack of papers he was holding haphazardly down in front of him, knocking over several of the small cast metal markers scattered across the Orlais half of the map, then dashed around the table. The people warming themselves in huddled groups watched with quiet amusement as he sprinted through the main hall, threw open the doors, and stomped down the snowy steps to the courtyard, leaving huge boot prints in his wake.

The gate was being lowered as he approached, and he could see the group of riders growing larger as they crossed the long bridge from the barbican. He watched as the elk at the front of the party sped up considerably. Freya had seen Cullen’s shape materialize and spurred the animal into a canter, eager to get inside the keep. Flapjack bugled appreciatively at the sight of the castle, happily anticipating the warm hay that would welcome him in his stall at the stables.

He slowed to a trot when they crossed the threshold of the keep, and Cullen jogged toward them. Freya sat atop the elk, clad in a fur-lined cloak and a warm woolen cowl that covered her head and the lower half of her face. She and the rest of the travelers were encrusted head-to-toe with ice and snow. She pulled the elk to a stop as Cullen ran up, reaching his arms up toward her. She slid off the saddle into them, and he wrapped her in a tight hug. Pulling the cowl down, he kissed her with gusto. She welcomed the warmth of his mouth against her lips, shivering against the cold breeze. He breathed in deeply as he kissed her, taking in her scent; it was the usual Freya smell, mixed with sweat and snow and campfires. She smelled like adventure, he thought to himself.

“You’re early!” he gushed, breathless with excitement as he pulled away from her. “We didn’t expect you for a couple more days!”

Master Dennet, bundled up against the cold, had joined the party at the gates. He took Flapjack’s reigns and turned to lead him back toward the stables. Freya patted the elk’s striped flank affectionately as he left. The rest of the party had trotted up and were busy dismounting, clapping their hands together to break up the crusts of frost covering their gloves.

“We left sooner than we expected,” said Freya, her voice hoarse. Snowflakes clung to her eyelashes and her nose looked red and wind-burnt.

“You’re freezing,” Cullen said, his voice turning from elation to concern. “Let’s get everyone inside, and then you can tell me all about it.”

He took her hand, and she realized his was bare.

“Where are your gloves?” she croaked, giving him a stern look as they walked toward the steps up to the castle. “You’ll lose all your fingers in these temperatures!”

“I didn’t have time to grab them,” he said, shrugging. “I heard you were approaching and I sprinted all the way from the war room.”

Freya let out a raspy laugh.

“You could have waited, _ma'nehn._ ”

“No,” he told her, smiling down at her and giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. “I really couldn’t.”

They tromped up the snow-covered steps and into the main hall. A few servants stood by to gather everyone’s wet traveling gear. Cullen helped Freya unwrap herself from her snowy cloak and cowl, shaking the ice off them, and she heaved a sigh of relief as she shed her boots. Handing her things off to someone without taking his eyes off her, Cullen held Freya’s cold, bare hands, rubbing them briskly between his.

“You need tea,” he told her. “Or cocoa. Something hot to drink to help warm you up, make your throat feel better.”

“Actually, you know what I want more than _anything_ right now?” she asked.

“Does it involve a four-poster bed and no clothes?” asked Cullen quietly near her ear, looking suddenly eager. She laughed.

“That can be step two,” she told him, smiling. “But first, I haven’t been properly warm for three days, and I would give my left arm for a hot bath.”

“Well, I think that can easily be arranged _without_ loss of limb. I’ll go have someone ready one for you.”

He walked off to go find a servant who could assist. Leliana and Josephine appeared from the doorway to Josephine’s office, approaching with pleasant smiles on their faces. Josephine hugged her affectionately, and Leliana squeezed her shoulder.

“It’s good to have you back safe, Inquisitor,” she said. “Some of us in particular were _very_ anxious for your arrival.”

“Yes,” agreed Josephine, pulling back to look at her friend with a grin. “He was quite enthusiastic when he heard you had returned.”

“Well, it’s good to be home,” said Freya. “I can almost feel my toes again, I think.”

“You sound very gravelly,” Leliana told her with a frown. “Can we get you something for your throat?”

“Elfroot tea would be lovely. I believe Cullen is having a bath arranged, so if someone could just have a mug of that waiting in the bath house I would be very grateful.”

Josephine nodded.

“I’ll get someone on it right away,” she said, and she bustled off.

“Inquisitor,” said Leliana, pulling Freya closer to her and leaning in to whisper. “You should know that Cullen hasn’t been very well the last couple of weeks. His symptoms have been worse. _Much_ worse. He seems fine today, but if it happens again soon, I don’t want you to be caught off-guard. He’s had a _very_ hard time, especially with you away.”

Freya nodded, noticing Cullen approaching them again.

“Thanks for letting me know,” she said quietly. Leliana straightened, adjusting one of her sleeves nonchalantly as the Commander walked up to them.

“They’re drawing the bath now,” he told her. “Shouldn’t take too long.”

“Oh, thank goodness. I can’t remember what 'warm' even feels like,” Freya said, tucking her hands under her arms. “We hit snow right before we approached the Frostbacks and it’s been nothing but freezing temperatures since. The roads through the mountains are almost impassable. I’m not sure it’ll be feasible for us to leave Skyhold again until the worst of the winter storms are over.”

Leliana looked at Cullen’s joyful expression.

“Well, I think some of us find that to be quite happy news,” she said, smirking. “I’m going to go get some more work done. You enjoy your bath and get some rest.”

The rest of the traveling party had finally gotten out of their wet things and were talking of heading to the Herald's Rest for warm drinks and songs by the fire to celebrate their return. Freya politely turned down their invitation to join, and Dorian looked at Cullen before giving her a knowing wink and a crooked smile as they turned to head out of the hall. She returned his grin, then turned to face Cullen.

“Think they’ll have that bath almost ready by now?” she asked.

“I expect so,” he said. “Want me to walk you to the bath house?”

“Actually, I was hoping for some company in the tub,” answered Freya, wrapping her arms around his waist. He raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, really?” he asked, his face breaking into a broad grin.

“I know, it’s a lot to ask.”

“Yes,” he agreed with mock seriousness as she turned him toward the direction of the bath house, walking backwards and taking both his hands in hers. “It’s _terribly_ hard being me.”

Freya stopped, a look of sudden recollection on her face.

“Oh! I need to stop by the bedroom and get--”

“No!” interrupted Cullen, squeezing her hand tight and looking anxious. “Er, that is… you can’t go in there. Not just yet.”

“What?” asked Freya, frowning. “Why not?”

“It’s… well, it’s meant to be a surprise. What is it you need? I can go get it for you.”

“Cullen,” she said, giving him a suspicious look. “What did you do?”

“Nothing! Well, nothing _bad_. You’ll like it, I promise. But I want it to be special. Tell me what you need from the room and I’ll get it, and after your bath we'll go up together and you can see.”

Freya gave him a small smile, still looking dubious.

“Okaaay...” she said slowly, raising an eyebrow. “Pair of smalls, clean tunic and leggings, and that little bottle with flowers floating in it that’s on my bedside table.”

He nodded and dashed off to the door that led to her chambers, Freya watching and shaking her head, wondering what in the world he had waiting for her up there.


	2. Ar'an Suledin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I know who I am when I'm alone,_  
>  _I'm something else when I see you._  
>  _You don't understand, you should never know_  
>  _how easy you are to need..._  
>     
>  _-Hozier, "It Will Come Back"_

The bath house was deliciously warm compared to the rest of the drafty castle. Curling tendrils of steam rose from the large copper tub in the center of the room, filling the air with vapor. A wooden bench with a pile of towels, a clean bath sponge, and a mug of hot elfroot tea had been set down close to the edge of the tub. Freya let out a long, happy sigh as they entered, breathing in the warm mist. She lost no time peeling her snow-dampened clothes off, tossing them in a pile on the floor. Forgetting all about his invitation into the bath tub, Cullen stared as she straightened up from pulling her smalls over her ankles. She looked up to see his unblinking gaze and slightly open mouth, and she giggled at him.

“Missed me, did you?” she said.

“Maker’s _breath_ ,” he answered, slowly dragging his amber eyes back up to her twinkling green ones. “You have _no idea_.”

She walked over to him and took the small pile of her clean clothes out of his hands, setting them on the bench. She set the little bottle he’d fetched for her near her tea, then began undressing him. He let her, silently watching her work as she stripped him of his armor and clothing. When she’d finally gotten him naked, she pulled him toward the tub. Holding her hand, he steadied her as she put one leg over the ledge, easing her foot into the water. She hissed a bit as the heat prickled against her frozen toes, then sank her other leg in, closing her eyes and sitting slowly. Another sigh escaped her lips.

“Hot enough?” Cullen asked.

“Yes, it’s almost perfect,” she said, looking up at him.

“Almost?”

“Needs more Cullen,” she told him, smiling and crooking a finger at him in a come-hither gesture. She scooted all the way to one end of the tub, and he climbed in slowly behind her. He seated himself and rested his back against the warm copper, and she sank into him, closing her eyes again. “ _Now_ it’s perfect.”

Wrapping his arms around her, he smiled.

“I haven’t had a proper bath since we left Skyhold,” said Freya apologetically. “I probably smell like a pack of ogres.” She propped one foot against the rim of the tub and nestled back against Cullen’s shoulder, grabbing her mug to take a drink of the hot tea. It felt slippery and soothing against her raw throat.

“You don’t,” he told her, kissing the top of her head. “I love the way you smell after an excursion. You smell like a woman who’s been off saving the world.”

Grabbing the sponge off the top of the pile of towels, Cullen dunked it in the hot water and squeezed it over Freya’s freckled shoulders and chest. She let out an appreciative “Mmmmmm” sound, tilting her head so it rested against his jaw. She reached out for the bottle he’d retrieved from the bedroom and handed it back to him.

“On the sponge?” he asked her, and she nodded. She heard him pop the cork out of the bottle, and the heavy floral scent of embrium blossoms filled the air. He dripped a little of the viscous fluid onto the sponge and worked it in. It foamed into a light lather. Fryea leaned forward, exposing her lean back, and Cullen began working the sponge in small circles over her skin.

“So this is why you always smell so good,” he said, breathing in the familiar scent. She smiled.

“It’s what I use on my hair, too,” she told him. “There’s this particular berry that grows wild, you can find it just about everywhere. If you boil it down and strain the liquid, it makes a nice sort of cleanser. What little animal fat we had in the clan was needed for things other than soap, so we made this, instead. My _mamae_ would add flowers to make it smell nice. Embrium was always my favorite.”

“Would you like me to wash your hair?” he asked, brushing his fingers over one of the two thick plaits that hung over her back and into the water.

“If you want to,” she said, looking at him over her shoulder. He took one of her braids in his hands and began to gently unweave it. “Just be careful. A little of that stuff goes a long way.”

He let her other braid down and she shook her red waves loose, dunking them into the water to dampen her hair. She squeezed the excess out and sat with her head tilted back toward Cullen, and a moment later she felt his thick, callused fingers on her scalp, massaging gently. She closed her eyes again and breathed deeply, warm and content for the first time since leaving his arms several weeks before.

“So what was it like?” asked Cullen. “The plains, I mean.”  
  
“It was…” Freya paused, searching for the words to describe it. “It was _strange_.”

“How so?”  
  
“You know the history of the place?” she asked.

“Not entirely.”

“It’s called the Exalted Plains by humans because it was where the Exalted March against the elves took place,” she explained. “Most Dalish elves refuse to even use that name. We call it _Dirthavaren_ , ‘The Promise.’ Everywhere you look, there’s evidence of the destruction of the Elvhenan. Huge memorials to Andrastians who fought and slaughtered elves by the hundreds to threaten my people to convert to worshipping the Maker. It physically _hurt_ to be there, sometimes.”

Cullen was silent, feeling a heavy brick of shame in the pit of his stomach.

“But then we’d come across a shrine to one of the elven gods, or we’d see a herd of halla running wild and free over the plains, and I was overcome with such joy and pride. It reminded me of something Keeper Deshanna used to say whenever we talked about the Andrastian conquests: _Ar’an suledin_. ‘We endure.’ They tried to make us submit, and when they couldn’t, they tried to wipe us out. But here we are, still resisting. Still holding our heads high.”

There was more silence for a moment as Cullen washed the suds from his hands. He reached for a pitcher on the ground to rinse her hair. She leaned back and closed her eyes as he poured the pitcher over her a few times, leaving her wet hair clean and slightly tangled.

“You’re quiet,” she told him, turning around to face him and tucking her knees to her chest.

“I never know what to say when you talk about these things,” he admitted, putting the cork back in Freya’s bottle and setting it back down on the bench. “I feel like I should apologize, or console you somehow, or maybe both. But I’m always afraid of saying the wrong thing. What do you say to someone whose whole culture has been systematically erased for centuries? By your _own_ _religion_?”

Freya pursed her lips thoughtfully.

“I don’t want an apology,” she said. “At least, not from _you_. Andrastians are just like any other religion. There are a lot of extremists who would rather see my people dead than worshipping anyone but the Maker. There are also elves who think humans should all rot and let us have Thedas back. And then there are people like you and I who are just trying to make it through life being good to others, regardless of their faith or their race. We just don’t typically shout loud enough to drown out the assholes, unfortunately.”

“Well,” he said, reaching toward her and inviting her to come close, “regardless of that, I’m sorry it hurt you. And I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

Freya cuddled up into his chest, stretching her legs and intertwining them with Cullen’s. They lay there in silence for several minutes, drinking in the warmth of the steamy room and their moment of quiet bliss.

“How have _you_ been?” Freya asked after a bit. There was a moment’s hesitation, and she felt his heartbeat quicken slightly.

“Oh, you know,” he replied. “The usual.”

“‘The usual?’” she repeated.

“Mmmhmm.”

 

Pause.

 

“How many nights?”

Cullen looked down at her, scooping water over her exposed shoulder to keep her warm.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“How many bad nights did you have while I was gone?”

He cleared his throat, the sound harsh against Freya’s ear.

“I don’t know,” he told her.

It wasn’t a lie; there had been so many sleepless nights spent shaking and feverish in her empty room that he’d lost count. More bad nights than good. But he didn’t need to trouble her with that information. He felt confident that it would get better, now that she was back.

“How are you today?” she asked, running her hand lightly along his muscular arm. Her touch raised gooseflesh on his skin. Maker, he’d missed that.

“At the present moment,” he told her, gently lifting her chin with one finger, “I could not possibly be happier.”

He pulled her into a deep kiss, sliding his hand up her jaw and around the back of her neck to tangle his fingers in her wet hair. Freya felt his other hand sneaking up to her breasts, and she smiled against his mouth. Placing a hand over his to stop him, she pulled away and grinned at him.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she told him, and the resulting pout he gave her made her laugh out loud. “I was promised a surprise, and there’s a warm, soft bed with our names on it up there.”  
  
“Well, in that case,” Cullen said, standing up and dripping water all over the wooden floor as he stepped hurriedly out of the tub. “I’ll race you to see who can dress the fastest.”


	3. Dalish Glass (NSFW)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I've no language left to say it,_   
>  _but all I do is quake to her._   
>  _Breaking if I try to convey it,_   
>  _the broken love I make to her._
> 
> _-Hozier, "Foreigner's God"_   
>    
> 

“Okay, three more, and then we’re at the top.”

Freya smiled as Cullen followed her up the stairs to her chambers, his rough hands covering her eyes completely as she cautiously walked up the last few steps. She was wildly curious about what was waiting at the top. As she crested the last step, Cullen turned her toward the middle of the room. She could feel warmth from the fireplace coming from her right, and she could tell she was facing her balcony door.

“Are you ready?” asked Cullen, and she could sense the anticipation and excitement in his voice.

“Nah,” Freya replied with a shrug. “I’ll just stand here with your hands over my eyes for another hour or so.”

Cullen scoffed and dropped his fingers to her ribs, tickling them. She doubled over in a fit of giggles.

“Go ahead and look,” he told her, grinning.

Freya straightened and opened her eyes, laughter still on her lips. Blinking, she allowed her vision to adjust to the light. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw what Cullen had done.

All of the windows in her room had been replaced. The bright winter moonlight reflected on the snow covering the balcony, and silver-white light poured in through a glittering forest of stained glass trees, casting spots of glowing gold, green, and red on the stone floor.

“Oh, Cullen,” she breathed, “these are _beautiful_.”

He was beaming at her reaction.

“I couldn’t bring real trees into your room, so I figured this was the next best thing. They were made by a Dalish artisan, from Clan... Rolla-something?”

“Ralaferin?” Freya asked, turning to him.

“That’s the one,” he answered, snapping his fingers. “Do you know of them?”  
  
“Of course,” she replied. “Everyone does. They’re one of the oldest Dalish clans. Creators, Cullen, this is _amazing_. Look how detailed…”

Her voice trailed off as she stepped closer to the windows, staring up at them.

“So you like them?” asked Cullen.

“They’re perfect, _ma’nehn_ ,” she answered, turning to him with wide eyes.

“Now look at the bed,” he told her, smiling broadly.

“The what?” she asked, looking confused.

She turned to the corner where her bed was. Where the ornate four-poster had stood for months, there was now a rustic-looking wooden frame covered in carvings of frolicking halla. Instead of plush brocade fabrics, the mattress was piled with familiar-looking woven blankets. Freya gasped, her jaw dropping. She walked over to the bed, running her fingers over the carvings and admiring the colorful Dalish patterns on the blankets.

“Thought you might feel more at home in a bed like this than that big canopied monstrosity,” he told her, walking up next to her. “But if you don’t like it, we can send it all back--”

“Don’t you even _think_ about it,” she said, turning to him with tears stinging her eyes. “Cullen, this is… Nobody has _ever_ done anything so thoughtful for me before. I love it. _Thank you_.”

Throwing her arms around his neck, Freya pulled him into an enthusiastic kiss, and he lifted her off the ground a little, smiling against her lips.

“Happy Satinalia a few days early,” he told her, setting her back down. “I have something else to give you on the actual holiday, but I wanted to make sure this was put together before you got back.”

Freya suddenly looked embarrassed, her cheeks turning slightly pink.

“Oh, _ma’nehn_ … I didn’t even think to get you anything. Dalish don’t celebrate Satinalia.”

“You’re home safe and in my arms,” Cullen said, smiling at her. “That’s the best gift I could ask for.”

He ran his fingers through her hair, which was drying into its usual wild red waves. The familiar soft texture sent a pang of affection and yearning through his core. Still grinning at her, he gestured to the bed with a nod of his head.

“Wanna break it in?” he asked. She smiled back at him and yanked him down into a more fervent kiss. When they pulled apart, he raised an eyebrow at her. “So… yes?”

Laughing, Freya nodded and pulled him backwards to the bed, laying back with him on top of her. He smiled sweetly at her for a moment, soft eyes meeting her gaze as he ran a hand lightly over her cheek.

“I missed you so much,” he told her before enveloping her mouth with his. Her slender fingers found their way around to the back of his neck, pulling him even tighter against her. He kissed her slowly and tenderly, his longing palpable. Freya felt his fingers trace their way down to her waist, barely slipping under the hem of her shirt as he pulled away to whisper, “May I?”

She smiled.

“Consider this an open invitation to take off anything you want tonight,” she told him.

He slid his hands up and pulled the linen tunic over her head. She hadn’t bothered with a breast band after their bath, and the sudden chill against her naked skin made her nipples stiffen. Cullen leaned back and removed his own shirt, tossing it behind him onto the floor. Pressing his bare chest against hers, he kissed her again, one warm hand cupping itself over her breast. Freya could feel him growing hard, his erection digging into her hip bone as he slid his tongue against hers. He was in no hurry tonight, though.

He moved to her neck, his soft lips trailing down slowly to her collarbone. The hand at her breast snaked its way down to her leggings, and she felt a gentle tug as her leather laces came loose in his fingers. Closing her eyes, she bit her lip as he exhaled slowly against her neck, the warmth on her sensitive skin sending a shiver down her spine. His hand slipped into her leggings and between her legs, rubbing teasingly over the wet fabric of her smalls. She thrust eagerly against his palm.

Cullen drew his hand back out and sat up on the bed, pulling her pants and smalls off her legs in one smooth motion. He stood, worked his way out of his own trousers, and then sat next to Freya, his eyes feasting on her. He placed a hand lightly on her clavicle, fingers trailing down over the curve of her breast and along the flat expanse of her stomach.

“It wasn’t home without you here,” he told her quietly, his hands now outlining the familiar lines of her hips. He traced his fingertips down one of her legs toward her bent knee, gently nudging her thighs apart. “I spent every night wishing you were back here in this bed.”

She watched his palm slide smoothly against her pale skin back up to the junction where her legs met, and she arched a little as he tucked two thick fingers inside her. His thumb found its way to her clit, and he made slow little figure-eights against it, eyes locked on her face as she closed her eyes again. He could see her breasts rising and falling faster now as she drew deep breaths, relishing in his touch.

Hot nectar dripped over his wrist as he pleasured her, and the throb in his cock grew more pronounced as he watched his fingers slide in and out of her. He could feel her walls beginning to tighten.

Freya felt his hand leave her and opened her eyes to plead for more, but before she knew what was happening his mouth was around her clit and he was rapidly bringing her tumbling over the edge. She ground herself into his tongue, fingers gripping his blonde curls.

“ _Fuck_ , Cullen!” she cried out, and waves of ecstasy wracked her body. Every nerve in her vibrated deliciously, alive with pleasure as her climax bloomed from her core to her extremities. He carried her through it, reading her body with his touch and slowing as it faded. Pulling away from her, he rested one hand on her quivering thigh, a crooked smile on his face.

She reached out for him, and he leaned forward to kiss her again, letting her taste herself on his lips. She took his length in her hand.

“ _Garas, aman na'mis_ ,” she whispered. Then, guiding him to her entrance, she left no question as to what she had asked of him. He pushed into her slowly and without resistance, her walls slick and ready to receive his ample girth. With her chin cupped in one strong hand and his forehead pressed to hers, he made love to her slowly, filling her completely with each methodical thrust.

Cullen drew shuddering breaths as his hips moved against hers, and his heart beat a fast cadence, hammering hard against his chest. He’d lain in this bed thinking about nothing but Freya for weeks--the way her bright green eyes twinkled when she smiled, the softness of her lips, her smell, the sound of her buoyant laughter, the feeling of her walls squeezing him, the salty-sweet taste of her sex, and all the little noises she made when he fucked her. It was the only thing that had gotten him through those long nights, when sleep wouldn’t come and he felt like he was being torn inside out.

Perspiration beaded along his forehead as he began to move inside her faster and more forcefully. Freya tangled her fingers into his sweat-drenched curls, scratching her nails against his scalp as he pistoned hard into her. A moan from his lungs sent a breath of warm air over her lips, and she covered his mouth with a deep, insistent kiss.

Slowing his hips again, Cullen backed himself away from the cliff of his orgasm and lost himself instead in the orchestra of her sensory output, breathing in her intoxicating scent and wrapping his hand into her soft hair. The slightly minty taste of elfroot still lingered on her tongue as it danced seductively against his. He pushed deep inside her, and she gasped against his mouth, back arched. The noise sent an immense throb through his loins, and he found he could no longer resist the siren song of her body wrapped tight around him.

Gripping her knee, he pulled her thigh to the side and began to thrust into her in a frenzy, the muscles in his core and his legs burning with the effort. He felt his cock clench, and then everything fell away as he poured into her, body and soul.

Freya waited for the roar that always accompanied his climax. Instead, Cullen let out something between a sob and a whimper as he came undone, wrapping her in his arms and burying his face in the crook of her neck. She held him, listening to him gasp for air against her skin as his body slowed, then stopped. Kissing her with soft, trembling lips, he pulled slowly out of her. He rested his head against her shoulder, nestling under her chin and draping his arm over her stomach to wrap around her back. 

“Cullen,” she whispered, caressing his cheek. “ _Ma'nehn..._  are you okay?”

He nodded against her. Squeezing her body closer, he said, "I'm fine."  
  
It was a lie, and they both knew.


	4. Boundaries and Remedies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _My head was warm, my skin was soaked.  
>  I called your name 'til the fever broke._
> 
> _When I awoke, the moon still hung,  
>  The night so black that the darkness hummed._
> 
> _I raised myself. My legs were weak.  
>  I prayed my mind be good to me._
> 
> _\--Hozier, "In the Woods Somewhere"_

When Freya fully awoke the next day, Cullen was already out of bed and buckling his mantle over his chest. She sat up, her hand brushing over the damp sheets where he’d been sleeping.

“Were you overwarm last night, _ma’nehn_?” she asked, frowning.

“The Dalish don’t fool around with their blankets, I guess,” he replied, giving her a small smile. He swallowed back a wave of nausea, turning away from her to get his boots. “I need to go take care of some things before our meeting this morning.”

“What about breakfast?”

“I’m not particularly hungry.” He sat on her settee and tied his laces quickly, avoiding her gaze. “I may grab some toast on the way to my office.”

Crossing the room briskly, he gave her a little peck on the cheek.

“See you in a bit.”

Freya watched him walk down the stairs, knees hugged to her chest. Creators, why wasn’t he just being _honest_ with her? She shook her head angrily, then rolled out of bed to dress herself for the day.

 

_________________________

 

Two hours later, they were in the war room listening to Josephine go over correspondence from Empress Celine regarding the Inquisition’s aid in the Exalted Plains. Freya kept shooting glances at Cullen. He was leaning heavily on the table, sweat rolling down his temples.

“I told the Empress we were happy to assist at Citadelle du Corbeau, and that she can let us know if we can be of any help to her troops in the future,” Josephine was saying. Cullen was barely paying attention. A dry heave came over him, and he covered his mouth with his forearm, trying to disguise it as a cough. His legs shook under him, and he faltered a bit as he steadied himself.

“Thank you Ambassador,” Freya said, taking her eyes off Cullen and looking toward the other two women. “Unless there is anything else that requires the Inquisition’s immediate attention, I think it would be best if we adjourned for the day and picked this up when our Commander is feeling better.”

“What?” Cullen asked, looking up suddenly with a furrowed brow. “Nonsense. I’m perfectly all right.”

“No, _ma'nehn_ ,” Freya said, putting a hand on his. “You’re not.”

He pulled away from her touch.

“Dammit, Freya, I said I’m _fine!_ ” he barked at her. He wobbled again, and he leaned over and planted his palms on the war table for support. Josephine and Leliana exchanged looks. Pursing her lips, Freya turned to them.

“Would you mind excusing us, please?” she asked, and Leliana nodded. The two women filed out of the room, Josephine casting a worried look over her shoulder as she shut the door behind her.

As soon as the latch clicked shut, Freya rounded on Cullen. He was staring down angrily, eyes on the map.

“Care to explain what that was for?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I don’t need you to coddle me,” Cullen told her without lifting his head. She could see the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching.

“You didn’t seem to mind it last night.”

“I would appreciate it,” he said slowly, “if you would keep our personal lives out of this room.”

“Oh, you want me to keep it professional? _”_ asked Freya, shrugging. “Okay, then. I’m officially pulling rank. Commander, you’re temporarily relieved of your duties until such time as I'm confident that you can perform them safely and effectively. I will inform Sister Leliana and Ambassador Montilyet that you will be taking a short sick leave, and then I will escort you upstairs.”

Cullen’s head snapped up, and he glared at her for a moment before responding.

“Fine,” he said, his voice quiet and laced with fury. “But I’m confident I can find my way to my _own_ room all by myself.”

“Sorry,” Freya said, putting her hands on her hips. “That’s unacceptable. Your former quarters are ill-equipped for winter weather, and the cold could prolong your recovery. And as I will also be out of commission for as long as you are sick, leaving the Inquisition without a Commander _and_ its leader for any longer than necessary is not a risk I'm willing to take.”

“What have _you_ got to do with it?” he asked.

Freya rolled her eyes.

“In spite of the fact that you are being _completely_ _fucking_ _ridiculous_ right now, as soon as we leave this room, I'm your lover. Not your boss. And if you think I would let anyone else in this keep take care of you through this, you’re mistaken.”

“We have medical staff who are more adequately equipped--”

“ _Trained Dalish healer!_ ” exclaimed Freya, pointing at her own chest. “ _Fenedhis,_ Cullen! Will you please stop being a stubborn _ass_ and holding a grudge, and just let me get you back to bed already?”

Narrowing his eyes, Cullen straightened and stalked toward the door, yanking it open and striding out. Freya followed, shaking her head. She paused briefly in Josephine’s office to explain the situation to the Ambassador and Leliana, then walked out into the main hall. Cullen was disappearing through the door to their bedroom. Cursing under her breath, she crossed the room after him.

When she caught up to him, he was doubled over in front of the stone steps. He retched loudly, collapsing onto one knee.

 _Oh, yeah_ , thought Freya, biting her tongue as she rolled her eyes again. _You look great. Totally fine._

He looked up at her pleadingly, and as soon as his brown eyes met hers, she softened. She knelt down next to him, smoothing his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he told her in a weak, quivering voice.

“Shhhh,” she whispered, gripping him under one arm and helping him stand. “Let’s just get you to bed.”

He allowed her to lead him slowly up the stairs, pausing often so he could lean against the wall as another wave of nausea hit him. When they finally got to the top, she pulled him to the middle of the room and began peeling off the layers of armor he’d donned to hide his sweat-drenched tunic. Once he was undressed, he allowed her to steady him as he crossed to the bed and climbed shakily into it. He dry-heaved loudly again, and Freya set an empty chamber pot next to him on the floor.

Walking over to her chest of herbs and potions, she dug around until she came up with a small bundle full of dried, sliced roots. She brought a piece back to Cullen.

“Open up,” she commanded, and she popped it into his mouth. The spicy taste of ginger hit his tongue. “Chew.”

As he ground the root between his teeth, Freya held out her hands.

“Arms,” she said, beckoning with her fingers, and Cullen obediently placed his forearms in her palms. She ran her fingers over his wrists, feeling for something. When she found the right place, she pushed the tips of her thumbs firmly into his skin, applying steady pressure.

“What’s that?” he asked quietly around the stringy hunk of root.

“Old Dalish cure for nausea,” she replied, her tone clipped. “Between this and the ginger, you should feel better in just a minute.”

There was a long pause.

“I really am sorry,” he told her after a moment, his voice small and shaky.

Sighing heavily, Freya looked up at him.

“Are you even sure you know why I’m mad in the first place?”

“...Because I yelled at you in the war room?” he asked, feeling sure it was the wrong answer as soon as it left his lips.

“You haven’t been honest with me since I rode into the keep yesterday, Cullen. I ask you how you are and you brush me off, or you outright lie to me and say you’re fine. You’re _not_ fine. You are _so fucking far from fine_ . ‘Fine’ is on another _continent_ right now.”

Shame crept warmly up Cullen’s face, and he looked down at her hands to avoid her gaze.

“You can yell at me all you want,” she said. “We’re going to get mad at one another and we’re going to raise our voices. That’s life. Especially when your job is as stressful as ours is every day. Feel your feelings however you need to, I won’t try to govern your tone. But you’re not allowed to lie to me. That’s _not_ okay.”

“You’re right,” he told her. “It’s not. I just… I didn’t want you to worry about me any more than you already do.”

She scoffed annoyedly, looking and sounding so much like Cassandra that Cullen could have sworn his friend had taken over Freya’s body momentarily.

“So it’s better for you to hide how bad it is until you’re practically puking on the war table? _That’s_ supposed to worry me _less_?”

Cullen took a deep breath, his whole body shaking now. The nausea was ebbing away, and he leaned back in bed, looking up again at her.

“I thought it would get better now that you’re back,” he told her sadly.

“Why would you think that?” she asked. “Cullen, I’m not some magical cure for your addiction. My mere presence in Skyhold isn’t enough to stop your body from violently rebelling against your efforts to get clean.”

She released the pressure on his wrists, momentarily leaving two white thumbprints on his skin. Sliding her hands down, she intertwined her fingers in his.

“You have to do this on your own power, _ma’nehn_. I can’t break this leash for you.”

“I know that,” he said. “But you always seem to make it easier to bear.”

“I can’t even do _that_ if you don’t tell me you’re hurting, though. So you see my dilemma.”

Grabbing the chamber pot from the floor, Freya held it in front of him.

“You can spit that out now,” she told him, and Cullen ejected the ginger root from his mouth. “Do you feel better?”

“I feel like an asshole.”

“Well, that’s appropriate. You were _being_ one. But do you feel less nauseated, at least?”

He looked up at her and saw that she was giving him a concerned, loving sort of gaze. Nodding, he reached over and pulled the sheets down on her side of the bed. She got up and came around to crawl in next to him, cuddling him into her chest. He shook in her arms, sweat still rolling down his forehead.

“I’m sorry, Freya,” he told her as he nuzzed against her neck.

“I know you are,” she said, kissing the top of his head and wiping his brow with her sleeve.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, _ma shan panal dam’alha_.”

“What does that mean?” Cullen asked.

“‘Combative old druffalo.’”

“I suppose I deserve that,” he said.

“You definitely do.”  
  
He squeezed her tighter, grateful for the comfort of her embrace as the aching throbs of lyrium withdrawal took over his body.


	5. Dirth'venuralas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Freshly disowned in some frozen devotion,_   
>  _no more alone or myself could I be._   
>  _Looks like I strayed to the arms that were open,_   
>  _no shortage of sordid, no protest from me..._
> 
>  
> 
> _Feeling more human and hooked on her flesh, I_  
>  _lay my heart down with the rest at her feet..._
> 
>  
> 
> _Leash-less confusion. I wander the concrete,_  
>  _wonder if better now having survived_  
>  _jarring of judgement and reason's defeat._  
>  _The sweet heat of her breath in my mouth,_  
>  _I'm alive._
> 
> _\--Hozier, "Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene"_  
> 

A blizzard had begun outside the keep, and little white tornadoes of snow were swirling around on the balcony when Freya awoke. It was late at night, and Cullen was muttering in his sleep. She looked over at him, rubbing sleep from her eyes. He’d kicked the covers off, and sweat glistened all over his naked body. At first, she couldn’t quite make out what he was saying under his breath, but then his voice became louder and quite clear.

“No! Not her, don’t... Not her!”

Freya reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. His skin was on fire.

“Cullen,” she whispered, shaking him gently. “ _Ma’nehn_ , wake up. You’re having a nightm--”

He woke with a start, his arms flailing. Freya caught his wrist in mid-air inches from her face.

“Whoa!” she said, putting her other hand on his chest. “Hey, it’s okay, Cullen. It’s me. It’s Freya.”

Cullen’s chest heaved as he blinked, looking around the room with a confused expression.

“You’re all right?” he asked, turning to her. “You’re not… it was a dream?”

“Just a bad dream,” she told him. He bowed his head, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“You were tied up, Samson had you. He was forcing you… Red lyrium…”  His voice trailed off.

Freya put her arms around him. He sank into her, and she cradled him against her bare chest as she kissed the hot flesh of his temple.

“It’s okay, Cullen. I’m here. I’m perfectly fine.”

His breathing leveled, and he wrapped his hands around her slender arms.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he said quietly.

“I’m not,” she replied. “You’re burning up, _ma'nehn_. We need to get you cooled down.”

She gave him another soft kiss and got out of bed, adjusting the waistband of her smalls as she crossed the carpeted stone to her water pitcher. Filling her wash basin, she brought it with a cloth over to the bedside table. Then, she filled a ceramic cup and handed it to Cullen.

He closed his eyes and drank greedily, suddenly aware of his intense thirst. He heard Freya rummaging around in her potions, the glass vessels clinking together as she pulled them out to look.

When she turned around, bottle in hand, she saw Cullen tipping his head back to swallow the last few drops of water.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she told him, looking worried, “you really shouldn’t--”

No sooner had he brought the cup away from his lips than he was already retching. Freya dashed forward, grabbing the chamber pot and flinging it in front of him just in time to catch a stream of regurgitated water from his lips. She held the pot steady, her other hand resting gently on his back. Heaving several more times, he vomited until he had fully emptied his stomach. He pushed the pot away, grimacing. Freya walked it several feet from the bed and set it on the floor.

She crossed back to the bed and sat down, taking the cup from Cullen’s shaking fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he said weakly. She stroked his cheek with her soft hand.

“No, no apologizing allowed,” she told him, her voice gentle and empathetic.

He gave her a weak smile.

“Good thing you’re so damn fast,” he said. “Saved the sheets.”

Taking the bottle she’d retrieved from her stash, she poured a small amount of potion into the cup.

“Here,” she said, handing it to him. He swallowed it, coughing slightly against the bitter taste. “Sorry, I know it’s strong. But it’ll help break the fever.”

She took the cup back over to her pitcher and refilled it.

“It’ll make you sweat buckets, and it’s going to feel like you’re dying of thirst. But you have to take little tiny drinks of water and space them out. When you’re this feverish, guzzling it will make your body bring it right back up. And we need that potion to stay down.”

She sat down again, holding the cup to his lips. He took a small sip, then leaned back against the headboard. Setting the cup down on the table, she took up the cloth, dunking it in the basin and wringing it out. He sighed as she applied it to his skin, wiping away his perspiration.

Freya took her time washing his body with the cloth, then combed more of the water through his hair with her fingers, cooling his scalp. She shivered against the cold air of the bedroom as she tended to him, her bare skin raising in goosebumps as chilly drafts hit her.

When she had gotten him cleaned of most of his perspiration, she got up and walked over to the settee where a pile of their clean laundry had been set earlier in the day. Grabbing a tunic off the pile, she threw it over her head. When the hem hit her knees, she realized it wasn’t hers. She paused for a moment, looking down at the huge garment, then shrugged and rolled up the sleeves that were dangling past her fingers. She stoked the fire, adding a fresh log, and then walked back to the bed. Cullen gave her another small smile.

“Looks better on you,” he told her, his teeth chattering as the shakes overtook him again. She grinned and climbed back onto the bed. Holding the cup to his lips again, she gave him a small drink. He swallowed, fighting back the urge to grab the cup and drain it again.

“Maker,” he croaked, “this thirst.”

“I know,” she said, stroking his hair. “I’m sorry. It’s not my favorite potion to use, but I’ve never seen you get this warm before.”

She tried not to let him see how afraid it made her. There had been a terrible summer years back, when half of Clan Lavellan had fallen ill. She and her mother had tended to several elves whose temperatures rose and rose, and she’d watched them slip away as delirium took over and they fell unconscious, never waking up again. If Cullen’s fever didn’t break soon…

She pushed the thought from her mind. Taking his hand, she closed her eyes and began to whisper in Elvhen.

“ _Sylaise, Arlise’amelan, lanalin ladarelan--_ ”

“What does that--” began Cullen.

“Shhh,” she said gently, without looking up. “I’m praying for you, _ma’nehn_.”

She started over, lacing her fingers into his and squeezing his hand tight.

“ _Sylaise, Arlise’amelan, lanalin ladarelan, ghi’la ma. Sul’ama em sileal lav’ar ar ladara min’ishan, ara vhen'an. Tel’vir ish i’ve’an vis ma nuven sul em alas’en shalan. Isa latha sasha mashan em. Ar’lana sha var’lin’en su mar sul’anathe, ar vena Vir Atish'an i’serannas._ ”

He closed his mouth and watched her in silence as she prayed, a lump forming in his throat.

Freya had always been quiet about her religion, perhaps because they believed such very different things. Truth be told, he hadn’t even realized she was the praying type. He’d never bothered to ask her much about her practice. But now, sitting here listening to the hushed, pleading words spilling from her lips, he was reminded of all those mornings he’d knelt in front of the statue of Andraste, begging her to let Freya come home safe to him, feeling helpless to do anything else with her so far away from him as she fought her battles across Thedas without him by her side.

As she finished her prayer, he realized that the same helpless feeling and all those same fears had been plaguing her all along, too.

 _You have demons to fight that don’t come from the Fade_ , she’d told him.

He thought about all the times he’d told her he was okay when he knew he wasn’t, and he imagined how he’d feel if he got a letter from her telling him she was doing just great, only to find out later that she’d been wounded and bleeding out on a bedroll in the middle of the Maker’s nowhere. The full weight of what he’d done to her by hiding his suffering hit him all at once, and his eyes suddenly stung.

Freya looked up to see his sad expression and his eyes rimmed in red.

“Cullen, what’s the matter?” she asked, frowning.

“I don’t deserve you.”

“Oh, _ma’nehn_ ,” she whispered, sliding up next to him and taking him in her arms. “Please don’t say that.”

“It’s true,” he insisted. “All the mistakes I’ve made, all the times I’ve hurt you, and you just open your arms for me, time and time again.”

“Well, of course I do,” she said. “I _love_ you.”

He shook his head, blinking his eyes rapidly against the stinging sensation prickling them.

“You should be with someone else. Someone better, who isn’t so… so _broken_.”

“I don’t think I could possibly find _anyone_ better,” she answered, running her fingers through his wet hair. “And we’re all broken in our own way, love. Corypheus and his war have made sure of that.”

Perspiration had begun to pour from his skin, and she took up the cloth and cooled it in the basin again. She lay it against his forehead. His body trembled against her, beads of his sweat dripping onto her chest and down the front of the huge tunic she’d wrapped herself in.

“You’re so strong, though,” he told her. “Nothing ever fazes you. You just keep pushing forward, even when your world is falling apart.”

Freya gave a small snort.

“Well, I have to _pretend_ I’m a rock. Leader of the Inquisition and all that. But there were so many nights in the last few weeks that I cried myself to sleep in my tent. I cried for my clan, for my little brothers and my _mamae_. I cried for you. I cried for all of Thedas. Mostly, though, I cried because I’m not sure I believe I’m the savior everyone thinks I am, and the weight of it all is just so overwhelming, and sometimes I’m not sure how I can keep moving underneath it.”

“How _do_ you keep going?” he asked, unable to fathom what it must be like to bear the immense burden he knew she carried.

“I imagine a little cottage in the woods somewhere,” she said, looking out at the swirling snow. “With walls full of windows to let in the light, and plenty of room for a family to grow. I picture a little hammock outside where we curl up together in the warm afternoon sun and nap the day away without a care in the world. I picture your armor hung up somewhere, for good. I just get through it by thinking about what’s waiting for us on the other side of this.”

There was a pause as Cullen let his own imagination wander to that little cottage in the woods.

“Is there a dog there, in this cabin in your mind?” he asked after a moment.

Freya laughed.

“Do you _want_ there to be?”

“I’ve always wanted one,” he told her. She tutted at him.

“Fereldens and their dogs,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “ _Ma’nehn_ , if it will get you through this, you can have as many dogs as you’d like.”

There was another pause, this time longer. Cullen swallowed and smacked his lips lightly, his throat dry. Freya held water to his lips again, and he took another small drink.

“What if I can’t?” he asked as she set the cup down. “Get through it, I mean.”

“You _can_ ,” she said firmly, running the cloth over his chest again.

“Some days I’m not so sure,” he said, quaking against her hand as she washed away his sweat. “There’s a full supply of lyrium for the Templars working in this keep. It would be so easy…”

Freya was silent for a moment, considering her response.

“Your body is your own, Cullen,” she told him. “Whatever choice you make, I’ll support you. But if you want to sever these chains, _you can do that_. I believe in your strength, and I’ll be here for you in whatever capacity you need me to be.”

He covered her hand with his, squeezing it affectionately. Freya laid her other palm over his forehead, and she was relieved to feel that his body was cooling. _‘Ma serannas, Sylaise,_ she thought to herself.

“Your fever’s breaking,” she told Cullen, freshening the cloth and drawing it over his skin again. “I expect you’ll feel lots better by morning.”

“I’m pretty sure it _is_ morning, technically.”

“Probably,” she said with a small grin. “Fortunately, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather stay up all night with.”

Cullen took her hand in his and kissed it softly.  
  
“Ditto,” he replied. “But if I’m going to stay up all night sweating, I can come up with some other ways to do it that would be a lot more enjoyable for both of us.”

“Well,” said Freya, “as soon as you’re feeling better, you can show me _all_ of them.”

He smiled as he curled into her chest again, and she cradled his shaking body against her until the dawn light poured through the glittering glass forest above their heads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dirth'venuralas: prayer, lit. "to speak to the gods"
> 
>    
> Freya’s prayer, translated into the Trade tongue:
> 
> “Sylaise, Hearthkeeper, Mother of Healers, guide me. Impart your wisdom to me as I care for this man--my heart and my home. Take him not into the Beyond if you wish me to save this world. It is only his love that sustains me. I give myself gladly to your service, I walk the path of peace with gratitude.”


	6. For The Man Who Has Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There's an art to life's distractions,_   
>  _to somehow escape the burning weight,_   
>  _the art of scraping through._
> 
> _\--Hozier, "Someone New"_

“You’re just _now_ thinking about this?”

Dorian was lounging in a chair at the library, an open book in his lap, giving the Inquisitor an incredulous sort of look.

“Elves aren’t in the habit of celebrating many Andrastian holidays that were co-opted from the worship of the old Tevinter gods,” Freya said, shrugging. “So you’ll forgive my lack of preparation.”

The Iron Bull, who was leaning against the wall next to Dorian, snorted.

“Well, _someone_ ordered her tea extra-sassy this morning,” said the mage, raising his well-manicured eyebrows. “Especially considering she wants help from other people.”

“Ah, cut her some slack, Pavus,” Bull said, nudging him. “She was up all night. And not in the fun way.”

Freya slumped into the chair across the table from Dorian, flinging her slender legs over the plush arm.

“I’ve only got three days to figure this out,” she said. “What the hell can I do for him in three days, with no way in or out of the Frostbacks? It has to be something I can get or make from inside Skyhold. What do you get a guy who has all his basic needs met and tells you he doesn't _want_ anything?”

“You know the Commander best, Boss,” said Bull. “What’s he into outside of work?”

“Chess. Ale.” She pursed her lips, thinking. “...Sex.”

“Well, that sounds like a decent enough evening,” said Dorian.

Freya rolled her eyes.

“I’m not getting him drunk, checkmating him, and then fucking him, and calling it a Satinalia present. I’ll save that for a normal Tuesday.”

Bull chuckled, then looked up at her.

“Say, Boss, aren’t you a dancer?”

“I was,” she said, shrugging. “Back when I had time for that sort of thing.”

“You could always dance for him.”

“That’s hardly a present, Bull,” she said, looking skeptical.

“I dunno,” he replied. “Some of the Tamassrans back home could practically get you off with a dance. If that’s not a fucking gift, I don’t know what is.”

Freya smirked, but shook her head.

“I’m sure he would love it, but what am I going to dance to? I don’t know anyone in this keep who knows how to play traditional Dalish music.”

“You could ask Heir,” suggested Dorian. “Maybe she does.”

“Hmm, I could,” said Freya, nodding and feigning serious consideration of this idea. “ _Or,_ I could throw her off a tall parapet.”

“Still holding a little grudge, I see.”

Freya shot him a look, and Bull let out another snort.

“One of these days, Pavus, she’s going to sock you. And I’m not gonna do a thing to stop it.”

The mage grinned.

“Fine, fine,” he said. “Dancing is out. What about a nice pair of silk scarves, then? I happen to know that the lovely Orlesian merchant we have here sells them, and they’re quite comfortable.”

Freya frowned.

“Cullen doesn’t strike me as the type to wear a scarf at all, Dorian, let alone a fancy Orlesian silk one.”

Bull and Dorian glanced at one another and laughed. She looked between the two men, confused.

“I seem to have missed out on the joke,” she said.

“Boss, these aren’t scarves for wearing around your _neck_ ,” said Bull. “Well, unless strangulation is your thing.”

“What?” she asked, looking even more bewildered.

Dorian shook his head, his smile curling his mustache up at the corners.

“They’re for _tying him up_ , pet,” he told her. “Or for him to tie _you_ up. Whatever you like.”

Comprehension dawned on Freya’s face, and she let out a small, “Ohhhh” sound.

“I know you’re skeptical about the whole sex-as-a-present thing,” said Bull, “but giving a man a place to sheath his sword is just about the best gift you can give him. And something like that might spice things up a b--”

“Bull, that’s it!” she cried, sitting up straight and looking at him. Her green eyes were sparkling excitedly in the flickering light from the sconces on the wall. “It’s perfect! I don’t have much time… I'll have to go get things started right away.”

She hopped up and dashed over, giving the Iron Bull a quick peck on the cheek and a hurried “Thank you!” as she scurried off down the steps.

“Excuse _me_ ,” said Dorian loudly over his shoulder as she rushed off, “but I believe it was _I_  who suggested the scarves.”

“Maybe that’s not what she meant,” said Bull shrugging. “What was it I said? 'A place to sheath your sword?'”

“Maker preserve us, do you think she’s literally going to _knit him a scabbard?”_

Bull guffawed loudly at this, his booming laugh echoing through the library. He was met with several disapproving looks and a loud “SHHHH!” from the archivist, and he stifled his noise with one huge hand as he pictured the Commander carrying his sword in a knit sheath covered in leaping white halla.

“Oh, shit,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “The amount of money I’d pay to see that…”

  
_________________________  


_“Three days?”_ Harritt asked, looking from Dagna to Freya and back again. The blacksmith looked at the pile of orders he already had to fill. “That’s not giving us a lot of time, Your Worship.”

“I’ll pay you both extra for the rush if you bump me to the front of the line,” said Freya, looking excited. “I have the schematics for it and everything. I found them ages ago, but I didn’t think I’d ever use them. I stashed them around here somewhere.”

She began leafing through a stack of paper on one of the tables in the undercroft, searching for the right one.

“Ha!” she exclaimed, holding up a drawing. She handed it to Dagna, and Harritt peered over her shoulder at it.

“This shouldn’t be too difficult,” said the dwarf, squinting. “I think between the two of us, we can get it done.”

“I’ll be bringing you something special to incorporate into it, but you won’t need it until the last,” said Freya, a devilish twinkle still shining in her eyes. “Keep me posted on your progress, and I’ll check in tomorrow. Thank you both so much! I owe you a pint!”

“And more than a few sovereigns,” said Harritt, watching the Inquisitor dash back up the stairs toward the main hall.

“Oh, come on,” said Dagna as she looked up at the blacksmith. “It’s a challenge. It’ll be _fun!”_

Harritt looked extremely skeptical about that, but he sighed resignedly and walked over to his workbench.

“Let’s get on it, then.”

  
_________________________

“Inquisitor!”

Freya’s head snapped up as she shut the door to the undercroft, recognizing Cullen’s voice. He was walking toward her in front of the throne.

“Cullen!” she said, trying to look nonchalant. She took a few steps forward, fidgeting slightly with her hands and then stuffing them into her pockets. “How are you feeling, love?”

“Like a new man,” he said, smiling broadly at the sight of her. “What have you been up to? Improving your daggers?”

“Mm, something like that,” said Freya, shrugging. “Did you get some sleep after breakfast?”

“Enough of a nap to keep me going,” he replied. “I feel like I’ve been cooped up like a kenneled Mabari, though. Care to get some fresh air?”

“Outside?” she asked. “It’s still awfully cold.”

“We’ll be able to keep ourselves warm,” Cullen said, grinning. Freya raised an eyebrow, and he chuckled. “I thought maybe, if you were up for it, we could… spar a bit?”

“Spar?” Freya asked, raising both eyebrows now. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to that kind of a beating, Commander?”

Cullen’s eyes crinkled merrily as he laughed.

“Someone’s feeling confident this afternoon,” he said. “Look, nobody will let me do any work today. They all think I still need more rest. But I’m feeling so antsy, and I thought… well, we’ve never practiced together. I watch you training all the time from my office window, it’s quite exhilarating.”

Freya gave him a crooked smirk at this.

“That... sounded better in my head,” he admitted, running a hand over the back of his hair. “But you _are_ a joy to watch, and I thought it might be fun to see what it’s like to clash blades with the Inquisitor herself.”

She considered, looking at his eager expression. She didn't want to rush him into a lot of activity after such a long and exhausting episode, but he looked like he was ready for the challenge. And there was something about locking weapons with him that did sound rather appealing.

“Alright, Chantry boy," she said "You’re on.”

Smiling at one another, they both turned to head to her quarters to armor up.

  
  
  
  



	7. Swordplay and Souvenirs (NSFW)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It looks ugly, but it's clean._  
>  _Oh mama, don't fuss over me._  
>  _The way she tells me I'm hers and she's mine,_  
>  _Open hand or closed fist would be fine._  
>  _The blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine._  
>     
>  _\--Hozier, "Cherry Wine"_

Fat flakes of snow were drifting down from the clouds when Freya and Cullen made their way out to the courtyard, both fully armored.

“And you’re _sure_ you’re feeling okay enough to fight?” she asked him, tromping down the snowy steps of the castle.

“Yes,” he answered.

“You’re _positive_?”

“If you ask me again,” Cullen told her, “I’ll tell Cabot to transfer the Chargers’ tab to you for a whole month.”

Freya snorted.

“Okay, fine. Shutting up.”

“You really don’t want us to use practice blades, though?” Cullen asked, his hand on the hilt of his sword as they crossed to a clear area.

“Better not ask that too loudly,” she replied, “or they’ll be calling you the Kitten of Ferelden next.”

He turned to look at her, open-mouthed, and saw that she was wearing a smug grin.

“Is _that_ how this is going to be?” he asked her, laughing. “Fine, then. This looks as good a place as any.”

Freya unsheathed her daggers, twirling them in her hands. Cullen pulled his sword out of its scabbard and hitched his shield up into place. She looked at him brandishing them, her Commander in all his armored glory, and a tingly sort of warmth awoke between her thighs. She forcibly pushed the distraction away, focusing her thoughts instead on her weapons--their weight in her hands, the feel of the leather grips against her fingertips. She blurred the lines between body and blade in her mind, allowing them to become an extension of herself.

“Ready?” Cullen asked, crouching slightly.

“Whenever you are,” she said, shrugging. She gave her daggers another flourish, then gripped them tightly in her palms. Cullen smiled at her, delighting in the picture of her small, feisty frame ready to pounce, and then he rushed at her playfully, sword aloft. She stepped easily to the side and whacked him on the ass with the flat of one blade.

“Don’t you even _think_ about going easy on me, Commander,” she laughed as he slowed and turned around, grinning. “You wanted to spar; let’s _spar_.”

“All right, all right,” he said, readying himself again. “For real this time. Come at me whenever you’re ready.”

 _“Andruil, lasa ma’mis sulan!”_ she shouted, then charged forward.

Their weapons met with a loud clang, shattering the silence of the courtyard. Cullen’s strength against Freya’s speed, they brought their blades together over and over again. No number of hours spent watching her fight could have prepared Cullen for an actual match with the elf. She was an untamed blur of red and silver as she danced around him, and he had barely recovered from one strike before she was leveling another against him. He spun to and fro, her daggers glancing off his shield as he struck out with his long sword.

Maker’s breath, she was good. "Exhilarating" didn’t even _touch_ this feeling.

He pushed hard with his shield, and she slid back a couple of feet on the slippery ground. He raised his sword as she bent down, and before he knew what was happening, he had a face full of snow. He stumbled mid-swing. His sword fell, and he spit cold slush out of his mouth.

“What a dirty play, you horrible cheater!” he spluttered, wiping his eyes and laughing.

“ _Garahnen ema emaronun in lath i'ivar'linast'vir_ ,” she told him, smiling. “‘All is fair in love and war.’”

“Who said that?” he asked.

“Fuck if I know.” She shrugged. “Some dead elf.”

She was panting hard, the efforts of maintaining her speed and the cold air making it difficult to catch her breath.

“You tired?” Cullen asked, dropping his shield. Freya grinned, inhaling deeply.

“You _wish_.”

She twirled her blades menacingly again, and Cullen watched the way her fingers nimbly spun and caught the hilts. As he listened to her heavy breaths and watched her grip her daggers firmly again, he thought of all the other things her hands could do. He felt a stirring in the pit of his stomach. The distraction almost cost him as Freya ran forward and thrust with her blades again. She let out a loud yell, and he barely got his shield back up in time to deflect her blows.

As soon as he dropped the shield low enough to see, she was gone, and he felt the flat of her blade hit him on the back. How on earth could a person be that _fast?_ He whirled, but she was already circling around to flank him again.

Cullen turned at just the wrong moment as Freya made to strike him again, and he felt her blade slice through his sleeve, cutting the inside of his forearm. He hissed loudly as a fat red droplet stained the snow at their feet, and they both stopped, stunned. He grabbed his arm, looking at the blood pooling on his skin. Narrowing his eyes in disbelief, he looked up at her.

“Cullen!” she cried, looking from his arm to the bright smear of crimson on the blade of her dagger. “Are you--”

“Office,” he said in a low rumble, turning away from her toward the keep. “ _Now_.”

He was already marching off, sheathing his sword and leaving little red splatters in the snow every few feet as his arm bled freely. Freya hurried after him, biting her lip nervously. _Fenedhis!_ she thought to herself. _Why_ had she insisted on real blades?

He mounted the steps to the parapets and walked quickly to his tower, the cut on his arm stinging in the cold air. Yanking open the door, he strode briskly in. Freya was several feet behind, struggling with her light steps to stomp through the thick layer of snow on the stone. She stumbled through the door, and he slammed it behind her.

“Cullen,” she stammered, turning to face him. “I am _so_ sorry, I didn’t mean--”

He ambushed her. Covering her mouth with his, their teeth crashing together, he lifted her off the ground. She let out a little yelp of surprise. Pushing her up against the wall, he burrowed his thick fingers into her hair. His tongue slid insistently against hers, devouring her like a man starved.

Gasping, Freya wrapped her legs around his waist, and as he ground into her she could feel how hard he was already, his pants straining. Her fingertips found their way to the nape of his neck, and she dug her nails into his skin.

Cullen thrust his hips into her crotch, everything between his legs aching and throbbing.

“I wanted to fuck you as soon as you started twirling your daggers,” he growled, his breath hot against her lips. She could feel herself growing wet, but she looked at the unlocked door nervously.

“Cullen, someone could walk in here at any minute,” she said, her tone hushed. He gave her a roguish smile.

“I know,” he said, rubbing against her remorselessly again, eliciting a dusky moan from her. “We’d better hurry, hadn’t we?”

He let her down, and she swiftly kicked off her boots and undid the laces of her leather pants, dropping them to the floor. Cullen didn’t bother to take his off. He unfastened them and pulled out his firm length, holding it in one hand as Freya yanked her smalls down. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she hopped up into his arms, and he backed her up to the wall again.

Freya spit into her palm and groped for Cullen, spreading her saliva over the thick head of his cock. He moaned at her touch, then covered her mouth with his again. She felt him take her lip between his teeth, nipping at her as she stroked him. A gasp escaped her, and his hand pushed hers away as he took his length into his own palm. Lifting her body slightly with the other hand, he plunged himself into her and buried himself up to the hilt. She drew in a sharp breath.

 _“Fuck,”_ he breathed, feeling her warmth envelop him. He pulled out and slammed back into her, cold stone scraping roughly against her naked ass as he drove her into the wall with his thrust. She braced herself by grabbing his forearm, and he hissed loudly again as her fingers brushed the fresh wound.

Freya quickly moved her hand up to grip his silver pauldron instead, smearing her fingerprints in vivid scarlet across the shiny surface. The leather straps holding it in place dug into him as she held on. Her other hand rasped against his stubble as she slid it along his jaw, inviting him into another ravenous kiss. Wrapping a strong hand into her hair again, he gripped her tightly, preventing her from knocking her head into the wall as he rammed her hard.

Her breath hitched with every deep advance. Cullen moved his lips to the soft flesh in the crook of her neck, kissing and nipping at her as he pounded into her. He exhaled warmly against her, pebbling her skin into gooseflesh.

 _“Isalan ma gara suin em,”_ she breathed. “I want to feel you come, Cullen.”

He groaned, pulling her hair tighter as he brought his gaze back up to hers, nodding. His thrusts became more fervid, his feral lust taking over as he impaled her on his cock. Looking down, he watched himself sliding in and out of her, glistening with her nectar.

His core was on fire, warmth blooming through his loins as he felt the edge of his orgasm growing closer. He gripped her hip harder, pressing her into the wall and pounding into her with short, fast movements. He felt her squeeze her walls against him, and he gasped.

Freya felt him explode into her, his cock jerking and filling her with his hot seed, and he tipped his head back. A loud roar filled the tower, and the familiar noise sent shivers up her spine. Pressing his forehead to hers, he surged into her, his breath coming in short little rasps.

She ran a thumb along his lips as he wrung himself out inside her.

 _“‘Ma vheraan,”_ she whispered. “My lion is back.”

His mouth curled up into a smile as his climax ebbed. His legs were burning, the muscles quaking with the effort of holding them both up after the workout they’d had. He pressed himself firmly against the entrance of her womb again with a soft grunt, then touched his lips to hers. Sliding out of her, he gently set her down on the ground.

“ _Who’s_ a kitten, again?” he asked her, smiling wryly as he tugged on a wild strand of her hair that had come loose in their fight. She laughed, bending over to put her smalls back on.

“Well, I guess now I know how to get you riled.”

“Oh, you’ve never had to work hard to do _that_ , Freya.”

He covered himself up again, fastening his pants. She slid her leggings over her slender calves and pulled them over her hips. Looking up, she saw Cullen examining the gash on his forearm.

“I really am _so_ sorry about that,” she said, stepping forward and pulling the slashed fabric back to look at the cut. “It’s not too deep, though. Dorian should be able to fix it in about three seconds.”

“You know,” he told her, grinning, “I think I want to keep it, to remember this by.”

Freya chuckled.

“Suit yourself,” she told him. “At least let me clean it up, though.”

She pulled her boots on, and Cullen frowned.

“You’re going to use something that stings like a bastard, aren’t you?”

“Aww, it’ll be okay, widdle kitten,” she told him in a high pitched voice as she tied her laces.

“Watch it,” he said, smirking. “If you think I won’t give you another pounding--”

“Promises, promises,” said Freya, straightening and pulling the door open.

She smiled mischievously over her shoulder at him as she walked out of the office toward the main hall. Grinning back, he followed her out into the heavily falling snow that was now quickly filling in the evidence of their skirmish in the courtyard below.


	8. Midnight Snack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Honey, when you kill the lights_   
>  _and kiss my eyes,_   
>  _I feel like a person_   
>  _for a moment of my life._
> 
> _\--Hozier, "To Be Alone"_

Cullen was used to waking in the dead of night. Only on exceptionally rare occasion did he make it to morning uninterrupted by fever dreams and bouts of withdrawal, and tonight was not one of those exceptional times.

It was the pain that had awoken him originally, a dull ache that slowly built in his muscles until it throbbed through his whole body. Then there was the unquenchable thirst, followed shortly by nausea and dizziness that made him feel unpleasantly drunk. The pattern of his symptoms was familiar enough now that he knew in advance which one he could begin to dread next. He considered himself fortunate that the pounding headache had missed him tonight, at least.

He looked over at Freya, slumbering peacefully on the pillow next to him. He hated to wake her; he’d already taken away basically her whole night's sleep the previous evening. But he had made a commitment to both of them to lean on her more, and so he reluctantly reached over to her.

A couple of loose red tendrils of hair had fallen into her eyes, and he gently swept them out of her face, brushing his shaking fingers along her freckled cheek.

“Freya,” he whispered.

She stirred, sliding a hand up to his and wrapping her fingers around the rough skin of his palm.

“Mmmm?” she asked sleepily.

“Freya, forgive me,” he said. “I know it’s late, but I… need you.”

Freya blinked her green eyes open, looking up at his pained expression.

“What is it, _ma’nehn?”_ she asked, rolling toward him and placing a hand on his chest.

“Everything hurts,” he told her. “I feel nauseous. And I can’t get enough water. I drained the pitcher already.”

Freya sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“Okay. Let’s get your stomach settled first,” she said, swinging her legs over to hop out of bed. Cullen nodded, leaning back against his pillow again. When she returned, he gratefully accepted a hunk of dried ginger root and chewed it, the spicy flavor spreading as he pulverized it between his teeth. Freya held her hands out for his wrists, and he placed his large forearms in her slender fingers.

“You’ve bled through your bandage,” she observed as she ran a thumb down each wrist and then dug them in firmly. “We should change that before you go back to sleep.”

Bowing her head, she stifled a yawn into one of her shoulders, and Cullen opened his eyes again.

“I’m so sorry for waking you,” he told her weakly. She looked back up at him.

“Now, what did I say about apologizing?” she asked him with a small smile.

“I know, I know. I just feel bad robbing you of your sleep.”

“You’ve been running on a deficit since you quit lyrium, love,” Freya said sympathetically. “You won’t catch me complaining about missing a few winks to help you feel better.”

“You’re too good to me.”

“You let me look at you naked sometimes, so it seems a fair trade from my perspective.”

He grinned at that, and after a few more minutes he was relieved to find that the nausea was dwindling away.

“That feels better now,” he told her. She released his wrists, then scooted out of the bed again. She held out her hand in front of Cullen’s mouth, and he spit the ginger into her palm. She discarded it in the chamber pot. Then, crossing the room to her armoire, she dug out her little-used nightdress and pulled it over her head.

“I’m going to go down to the kitchen to get you some more water,” she told him. “Will you be okay for a few minutes?”

He nodded. She grabbed the ceramic pitcher and turned to leave.

“Hey,” he said quietly. She looked back at him over her shoulder, one hand on the bannister. “Love you.”

Freya smiled at him.

_“Ar lath ma, ara vhen’an.”_

She descended the steps, and after a few seconds, Cullen heard the door at the bottom quietly open and close again.

  
_________________________  


The main hall was deserted, the only light coming from a couple of braziers that still burned feebly and the colorful Satinalia lanterns that Josephine had hung all over the keep, which nobody had bothered to extinguish before retiring for the night. They cast bright splotches of blue, red, yellow, and green on the surfaces of the room. Freya thought to herself that it was really rather pretty, if not a bit of a frivolous use of lamp oil.

The floors were frigid against her bare feet as she crossed the large room toward the hall that led to the basements. She padded softly down the steps. Flickering light under the kitchen door told her that she wasn’t the only one who had snuck down there tonight. She knocked so as not to startle whoever was on the other side, then pushed the door open.

Dorian stood there, shirtless and unkempt, slicing an apple at a large butcher block by candlelight.

“Ah, it's you,” he said as he looked up. "Evening, Inquisitor."

“Hungry, Dorian?” she asked him, closing the door softly behind her.

“It’s for Bull,” he explained with a crooked smile. “He… worked up a bit of an appetite tonight. Of more than one kind.”

“Animals,” teased Freya, shaking her head, “the pair of you.”

 _“You’re_ one to talk,” said Dorian, looking up at her with just his eyes. “I hear the Commander raised quite a racket in his tower today after you two were spotted having a little skirmish in the courtyard. The men on afternoon watch seemed to think he was having rather a good time in there. Would you know anything about that? ...Maker, are you actually _blushing,_ Freya? Oh, I should win a prize for this.”

She crossed the room in silence, suppressing a grin and pretending not to see the look of glee on his face.

“I’m glad he’s feeling frisky again, in any case,” Dorian said, returning to cutting. “Truth be told, everyone was a bit concerned after your row the other day.”

“Well, he’s not cured, by any stretch of the imagination,” she said, heading toward a large cask. “But he’s getting there.”

The pipes that normally brought water to the pump in the kitchen had been frozen for weeks, so the kitchen staff had come up with the idea to bring in clean snow and ice to melt inside some of Cabot’s old barrels. As a result, all of the water now had a very earthy sort of taste, with just a smack of ale. She opened the spigot and let the pitcher fill, turning back to Dorian.

“He’s not feeling great again tonight, but it’s nothing compared to last night, or the day before that. Honestly, Dorian... that was _terrifying._ I’ve never seen him get that bad.”

“Cullen’s in largely unchartered waters with this,” said the mage, cutting through the flesh of the fruit with a crunch. “Not many Templars have attempted what he’s doing, and the ones who have, well… nobody’s fared quite as well as he has, so far.”

“Nobody’s _survived,_ you mean,” answered Freya, cutting the stream of water off again. “Or if they have, they haven’t come through intact.”

She carried the full pitcher over to where Dorian was working and set it down, leaning against the wooden surface.

“Rather,” he replied. “But I didn’t want to put it quite so bluntly.”

He looked up, studying Freya’s eyes.

“Are _you_ doing okay, pet? This can’t be easy for you.”

She sighed.

“I’m doing as well as I can be,” she said. “I worry about him so much. I just feel so damn helpless.”

“You’re certainly not _that,”_ he said, setting the knife down. “From what you’ve told me, not many others could care for him the way you can. I’m of no use, that’s for sure. Trying to help soothe a magical addiction with more magic would be near pointless. But _your_ remedies rely on nature, not magic, so you can fix things that even I can’t. And, as cliche as this is going to sound, your love gets him through what your potions can’t, I imagine.”

Pausing, he gave her an earnest look as he put a hand over hers and squeezed her fingers affectionately.

“Cullen is lucky to have you, Freya.”

She smiled at her friend.

“Thank you for saying that.”

“It’s just the truth,” he said, picking up the knife again. “Would the Commander like some apples? I can cut more for myself and Bull.”

“I can certainly offer them to him,” she said. He scraped the slices onto the plate he’d set out and handed them to her.

“Tell him I’m glad he’s on the mend,” Dorian said. Freya leaned over and pulled him into a tight one-armed hug.

“You’re a good man, Dorian.”

“Yes, well. Don’t let _that_ rumor get around.”

He walked over to pick out a new apple, and Freya closed the door behind her as she left, a smile on her lips.

  
_________________________

 

Cullen opened his eyes as he heard the bedroom door open and close again, and he watched as Freya appeared over the edge of the stairwell.

“Sorry it took me a bit,” she told him, bringing the pitcher and the plate of apple slices to the bedside table. “I ran into Dorian in the kitchens and he sent me up with something for you to eat, if you like. He says he’s glad you’re feeling better.”

“That was kind of him,” he replied, sitting up shakily. “You know, I never thought I’d hear myself say this about a Tevinter magister, but I rather like Pavus.”

“He’s been good to us both,” agreed Freya, pouring a cup of water for Cullen and handing it to him.

“He has. And I’m glad you have someone like him looking out for you when you’re away.”

“Try to take it slow on that, love,” she gently reminded him as he lifted the cup to his lips. “We don’t want a repeat of last night.”

She crossed to her kit of healing supplies, pulling out clean bandages and a bottle of bright green liquid. Cullen eyed the potion warily.

“Can’t they invent something to clean wounds that doesn’t feel like a dragon is spewing fire at your skin?” he asked.

 _“‘Vis nuisa, ra thanathe_ _,’_ as my _mamae_ used to say. ‘If it burns, it’s working.’ Anyway, you’re the one who wanted to keep it.”

“When we’re old and grey and I can’t bury myself in you up against a wall anymore, I’ll be able to look at that scar and remember our glory days.”

Chuckling, she took his injured arm and sat down next to him on the bed. She began unwrapping the dirty bandage, the layers sticky with old brown blood. As she carefully peeled away the last layer on top of the wound, Cullen winced.

“Sorry, _ma’nehn,”_ she murmured, pulling it away as gently as she could. She examined the cut, then wetted a piece of muslin gauze with the potion and wiped at the dried blood. He hissed as the potion seared against the open wound. Freya cleaned it quickly but thoroughly, then fanned his skin with her other hand to try to cool the burning sensation. She took up the roll of bandage and began wrapping it neatly around his bulky forearm. Looking up, she was pleased to see that Cullen had eaten several slices of apple.

“How are the aches?” she asked as she worked.

“Feels a bit like I lost a joust. Could be worse, but it’s probably going to keep me up awhile.”

“I could get my warming oil out and see if that helps again,” she offered.

“You’ve already been up for quite a bit,” he said around a mouthful of fruit, his tone sounding hesitant.

“Cullen,” she said, meeting his gaze. “That sounds suspiciously like you’re about to protest.”

Recognizing defeat, he took a deep breath and gave her a small smile.

“If you’re sure you don’t mind, I… yes, I would like that.”

“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

She tied the bandage snugly in place, then returned to her kit to stash the potion and retrieve her oil. Finishing the bite of apple he’d been working on, Cullen turned over onto his belly, displaying his muscular back.

Freya swallowed hard. She still hadn’t quite gotten used to the vague swooning feeling she got whenever she saw him unclothed, and honestly she hoped she never stopped having it. Some things shouldn’t be taken for granted, and her Commander’s body was unquestionably one of those things. She peeled off her nightdress, casting it to the side onto her settee, and climbed onto the bed.

Cullen felt her slight weight press against his buttocks as she straddled his backside, and he heard Freya pull the cork out of the bottle. A few seconds later, he felt her soft hands spreading the oil over his back, delicious warmth bathing his aching muscles. Closing his eyes, he let himself get lost in her touch. As much as he had hated to wake her, he was glad for her company now, and the care she was always more than willing to give him.

He sank deeper into his pillow, a faint smile on his lips in spite of the aches and the burning thirst, thinking to himself that this might turn out be an exceptional night, after all.


	9. Ballots, Blizzards, and Blunt Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Can't be unlearned,_   
>  _I've known the warmth of your doorways._   
>  _Through the cold, I'll find my way back to you._
> 
> _Oh please, give me mercy no more._   
>  _That's a kindness you can't afford._   
>  _I want you baby, tonight, as sure as you're born._
> 
> _\--Hozier, "It Will Come Back"_

“Remind me again what we’re doing?”

It was breakfast time on the morning before Satinalia. The tables in the dining hall buzzed with excited activity as Josephine walked along behind the benches, handing everyone small slips of paper.

“It’s tradition in Antiva for the court fool to be named king for a day on Satinalia,” the Ambassador explained to Freya. “But of course, we don’t have a fool here.”

“That depends largely on who you ask,” interjected Varric, and several of the people at their table snickered. Josephine gave him an indulgent smile before continuing.

“Since we don’t have an _officially appointed_ fool, I thought we could put it to a vote. The winner gets to be Inquisitor for a day.”

“Will this person have any actual power?” asked Cullen, eyeing Josephine skeptically.

“Whatsa matter, Cully-Wully?” asked Sera, leaning forward to peer around the Ambassador’s waist at him. “Worried someone’ll ban styling wax for the day?”

There were quite a few guffaws at this, and even Freya snorted into her tea. Cullen shot her a look across the table, and she tried to appear innocent.

“I just want to make an _informed_ decision, Sera,” he said, turning to fix the impish elf with a glare.

“No real power, no,” said Josephine, setting down a few charcoal pencils for people to write with. “They’ll be served first at dinner, wear a silly crown, get their pick of wine delivered to the throne whenever they want during the day, that sort of thing.”

“Can they attend my meetings for a month, as well?” asked Freya.

“No. But good try.”

The Inquisitor looked down at the piece of paper, then scribbled a name and folded it over.

“Who’d you vote for?” asked Cullen, leaning over and trying to catch a glimpse.

“Flapjack, of course,” she told him in a hushed tone. “Can you imagine people bringing wine to him at the throne? Josephine would lose her _mind.”_

He snorted at this. Freya looked down the table at all her friends, who were all giving careful consideration to their choice. It was an odd thing to see, people puzzling very seriously over who to give her job to for the day. Cassandra in particular was giving it a lot of thought, looking like she’d just been asked to select the next Divine. Freya secretly wondered who they’d all pick if it were a real election on the line. Would she keep her title if it were put to a vote? She wasn’t even sure she’d put her name in for consideration, if truth be told.

Solas was the only one not looking excited and contemplative. He was tucking into his eggs with an annoyed look on his face, ignoring his slip of paper. Freya knew he was irritated that she was allowing the celebration to take over the castle and halt Inquisition business, but she’d had to finally put her foot down with him about it. Morale was important, and in a crowd of mostly Andrastian followers, she didn’t feel it was her place to deny them their holiday fun.

“What would you do if you were _really_ Inquisitor for the day, with all the powers and responsibilities thereof?” Dorian asked Bull.

“Cancel all my meetings, drink ale, and have rollicking sex wherever I wanted,” said the Qunari.

“And that would be different from your normal life _how?”_ Freya asked, smirking.

 _“Exactly,”_ he replied. “I wouldn’t want your job, Boss.”

“What about you, Dorian?” she asked, turning to the mage. “What would you do?”

“Fix the decor. This place looks like it was decorated by a Ferelden kennel master.”

Vivienne tittered appreciatively at this, bent over her scrap of paper. “Finally, something we agree upon.”

“I’d invite every noble in Thedas over for a big fancy dinner, right?” Sera said, leaning forward. “And then, when they were all settled into their chairs, nice n’ comfy, BAM! Naked dancers on all the tables, jiggling their naughty bits 'round.”

“That,” said Blackwall with a chuckle, “was _not_ where I thought that was heading.”

“You’d probably solve a lot of disputes that way, actually,” Leliana said, shrugging. “Sometimes I think most of them really just need a good grind.”

Freya covered her mouth to prevent herself from spitting tea across the table, and Josephine looked positively horrified.

“Thank the Maker the Fade spit _Freya_ out with the Anchor, and not one of _you_ ,” the Ambassador said, shaking her head.

“Aw, lighten up, Ruffles,” said Varric. “Have a little fun before you die, huh?”

“Look at Cabot,” said Cullen, nodding to the adjacent table where the barkeep of the Herald’s Rest was standing up at his bench. “He’s actively campaigning for it.”

“...and a free round of ale for anyone who votes for me!” he was saying. He was met with cheers from several of the soldiers near him.

“Well, he’ll never have to make good on _that_ promise, will he?” asked Dorian. “They can't prove they voted for him, it’s a secret ballot. The scoundrel.”

“Still,” said Freya with a shrug, “you can’t blame him. He’d probably really like having someone serve _him_ for once.”

She finished her toast and pushed her plate back, setting her fork on top of it.

“What are your plans for the day?” Cullen asked her, taking a swig from his cup.

“I need to go take care of some business before our meeting this afternoon,” she told him, her mind wandering to the project she’d set for Harritt and Dagna. “Why?”

“Just curious.”  There was a short pause. “...Actually, that’s a lie. I have a backlog of reports to read in my office, and I was hoping to find a reason to avoid them.”

Freya laughed.

“The glamorous life of an Inquisition Commander,” she said, giving him a wide smile. He shrugged.

“There are perks,” he said, grinning at her. “Besides, it’s almost nice to get back to boring meetings and stacks of work after the week we’ve had.”

“I’ll second that,” agreed Freya.

Getting up from the bench and handing her slip of paper to Josephine, she came around the table to give Cullen a soft kiss on the temple.

“I’ll see you in the war room,” she said. He gave her a smile and watched as she walked out, heading toward the main hall.

_________________________

 

Another blizzard swooped down on the castle that night, and Freya and Cullen watched the snow building outside on the balcony as they lounged on their bed together, mugs of warm spiced wine in their hands. Cullen silently marveled at the fact that, even as a grown man, the evening before Satinalia still filled him with anticipation and excitement, just as it had when he’d been a boy.

“You know,” Freya confessed, interrupting his thoughts as she leaned back against the headboard and crossed her bare legs, “I still don’t really understand the point of Satinalia. I know it used to be a celebration of one of the old Tevinter gods, and now it’s about... one of the moons? What does any of that have to do with the Chant?”

Cullen gave a small shrug.

“To be perfectly honest with you, I’ve never really understood it fully, myself. Growing up, it was certainly _treated_ like a religious holiday. We’d go to the chantry and listen to a special service and sing special songs, then we’d come home, and my mother would prepare a huge dinner while my da built a big, roaring fire. Then we’d all gather around the hearth together and exchange gifts. It was one of my favorite days of the year. But I’ve never really been able to connect the dots between Satinalia and Andraste.”

“Well, in any case, Josephine seems very excited,” she replied. “I haven’t seen her this giddy since the Empress’s ball.”

“Antivans _looove_ Satinalia,” said Cullen over the rim of his mug. “It’s a huge party there, with masks and the king-for-a-day thing. That was never _my_ experience, but it’s interesting to see her culture’s take on it.”

He looked at Freya, who was staring into the middle distance with her mug clasped in both hands. She had enveloped herself in one of his overlarge sweaters, the long knit sleeves cuffed above her wrists. Her messy hair was tied back at her nape, loose waves framing her face, and he wasn’t sure if it was the wine or his excitement about the holiday, but he thought she looked particularly lovely in the light from the fireplace tonight.

“You know,” he said, scooting closer to her and sliding an arm around her waist, “it occurred to me when you were praying the other night that I know next to nothing about what _you_  believe.”

“I didn’t realize you were interested,” she said, looking over at him. “It’s not something I talk about a lot ordinarily, being surrounded by people who follow Andraste.”

“I _am_ interested.”

“Well, there’s an awful lot to explain for one night. I’m not even really sure where I’d begin.”

Cullen cocked his head.

“What about holidays? Do the Dalish celebrate any?”

“Sure,” answered Freya, nodding. “Most of the gods in the Elvhen pantheon have their own celebration. Mythal has an entire festival week all to herself in the summer.”

“What about winter?”

“We celebrate at the solstice, during Haring. The Dalish call the season _Eir’melana_ , ‘the time of snow.’ Snow was always beloved among my people. We believe it cleanses the earth, carrying away the sorrows and pain that have gathered throughout the warm months. In the spring, it all melts away, and you start fresh.”

She looked down at her mug, a shadow of sadness crossing her face.

“There’ll be a lot to wash away this year,” she said quietly.

Cullen squeezed her close, kissing the top of her head as he rubbed her arm.

“Yes," he agreed. "There will.”

She cuddled into him, tucking herself under his chin.

“Good things happened this year, too, though,” she told him, and he smiled.

“That they did.”

There was a pause as she took a long drink of her wine.

“I still remember our first war table meeting,” he said, “back at Haven. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you, but we’d only just met. Leliana caught me stealing glances at you every chance I could, she didn’t shut up about it for _days.”_

Leaning back, he tipped her chin up toward his face with one finger, meeting her gaze with his amber eyes.

“You’re beautiful, do you know that?” he asked her.

She smiled shyly at him, and he leaned down to kiss her, his lips soft and full and inviting. They broke apart, and he pressed his forehead to hers.

“Do you remember when I asked you about your Templar vows,” Freya asked him with a smirk, suddenly recalling one of their first conversations alone.

“Maker,” he said, grinning back and shaking his head. “Yes, I do. You lost no time in asking me if I’d taken a vow of chastity.”

“You were so adorably  _awkward,”_ she replied, giggling. “You turned bright red, and I thought your jaw was going to hit the ground.”

“I’d never met a woman so blunt before,” he said, his eyes twinkling as he chuckled.

“Mm, yes,” agreed Freya, nodding. “Subtlety has never been my strong suit.”

“I like it,” he said, running his thumb along her jaw. “You never leave any doubt as to what you’re thinking… what you _want.”_

He met her lips with his again, more passionately this time, and a warmth that had nothing to do with the wine spread through his groin.

“Want to know what I want right _now?”_ she asked, her sweet, boozy breath filling his nostrils.

“Yes,” he said, “I do.”

 _“Nuvenan ma ir rosas’da’din, ma tel’aman melin,”_ she whispered.

“What does that mean?”

Taking his wine out of his hands and setting it with hers on the bedside table, she climbed into his lap and pulled the sweater over her head, tossing it onto the floor. She pressed her bare chest against his and let one of her hands slip down between her legs to rub against the crotch of his pants. Leaning forward, she whispered against his ear.

  
“I’ll show you.”


	10. Satinalia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _But in all the world,_   
>  _there is one lover worthy of her,_   
>  _with as many souls claimed as she._
> 
> _But for all he's worth,_  
>  _he still shatters always on her earth,_  
>  _the cause of every tear she'd ever weep._  
>     
>  _\--Hozier, "Run"_

The weather had calmed by the time morning light crept in through the stained glass windows of the Inquisitor’s chambers. Cullen had already been awake for more than an hour, the familiar restless feeling of holiday anticipation taking him over.

He thought back to all the Satinalia mornings as a boy when he and his brother and sisters had clambered into his parents’ bedroom at the crack of dawn, insisting they get up and start the festivities. He let his mind wander to the little cottage Freya had described to him, imagining it covered in snow, picturing himself lying next to her, fast asleep in a dim bedroom, a small child with wild, strawberry-blonde curls barreling into the room and jumping up onto the bed, waking them with cries of excitement and joy.

Smiling warmly at the idea, he turned to look at Freya. She was deep asleep on her side, cocooned in the colorful woven blanket, facing away from him. The mugs of now stone-cold mulled wine still sat on the bedside table. They had been untouched since she set them there the night before, completely forgotten in the heat of their lovemaking.

He snuck a hand between her warm body and the sheets, wrapping it around her waist and inching closer to her. Stirring, she rolled over and cuddled up to him, nuzzling into his chest as she let out a small sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan.

“Morning,” she mumbled against his skin.

“Happy Satinalia, Freya.”

She leaned back, looking up at him with a sleepy expression.

“Happy Satinalia to _you_ , Cullen,” she said. “It’s just a normal day for me.”

“Somehow, I think that’s going to change when we get downstairs,” he told her with a grin.

He was right, of course.

Nothing about the day could be described as “normal” by Inquisition standards. She had never seen the keep so alive with happiness and excitement. Smiles adorned every face they passed on their way to breakfast, and not a single quarrel was overheard. (This, of course, was only because they couldn’t hear the noise downstairs in the kitchens, where preparations for the dinner feast were already underway, and the head cook was bickering with everyone in her presence.)

Breakfast was warm cinnamon rolls, covered in decadent white icing and served with mugs of hot tea and cocoa. Josephine announced that Cabot had won the vote for Inquisitor by a landslide, and the dining hall was filled with applause as she placed a gaudy costume crown on his head. Flapjack had pulled a respectable seven votes according to Leliana, and Cullen and Freya laughed to themselves, wondering who else had written down his name without any prompting from them.

After everyone had eaten their fill--Bull finished a whole tray of rolls all by himself--most of the keep’s inhabitants headed out to the courtyard to enjoy the freshly fallen snow.

Freya and Cullen visited the stables to give Flapjack some carrots, and they saw that someone had tied his antlers with festive holly branches and tinkling silver bells. The elk snuffled her hair appreciatively as he snarfed down his treats, and he didn’t seem too terribly disappointed when Freya broke the news that he’d lost the election.

When they emerged into the cold air again, they saw that a small crowd had gathered around Sera, who had built herself a very lifelike snow elf with a round, bald head and a grumpy expression.

“Snowlas!” she proudly declared, stepping back with her arms raised to present her artwork to them all. Laughter erupted in the cold morning air. Dorian and Freya had to hold one another up as they lost themselves in their mirth, gasping for breath around their giggles for several moments before they regained their composure.

“Where is Chuckles, anyway?” asked Varric. The elven mage had been conspicuously absent from the festivities.

“In the rotunda sulking _,_ I suspect,” Freya answered, wiping her streaming eyes with one hand. “His loss.”

 

A snowball fight erupted a few minutes later. Only one person knew for sure who fired the first shot, and they never owned up to it. One moment, they were all admiring Sera’s masterpiece, and the next, a fat ball of slush had smacked Cassandra in the side of the head, dripping icy melting water down her neck.

Everyone froze, watching her expression turn from shock to cold determination. She turned slowly, looking everyone in the eye in turn. Then, bending down, she scooped up a handful of snow and packed it menacingly in her hands. She spun and hurled it at Cullen, and it bounced into his broad chest and exploded up into his face. Within seconds, white missiles were being hurled from every direction. Even Cole joined in, laughing as snowballs bounced off the wide brim of his hat.

When everyone was thoroughly exhausted and shivering from the cold, they all tromped happily back inside to warm up in front of the roaring fires that filled the grates around the castle. Cabot was lounging in the throne with his feet up, enjoying his second goblet of wine and merrily bossing at everyone within earshot.

“He makes my job look easy,” Freya joked, watching him.

“Wait until Josephine forces him to memorize fancy dinner party menus and eat snails,” Cullen told her, smiling. “It’ll be less fun for him then.”

A special afternoon service had been planned by Mother Giselle for those who wished to attend, and Freya joined, holding Cullen’s hand as they walked to the small chapel off the garden. It was packed, and she listened with polite interest as the Revered Mother delivered her sermon and recited from the Chant. The gathered masses joined in unison in Satinalia hymns familiar to them all, Cullen’s deep golden tones filling her ears above the rest as he sang next to her. Despite not being a follower or caring much about the words that issued from his lips, the sound of his voice filled her with a warm, tingling sort of happiness, and she felt her heart give a delighted flutter as he looked down mid-song to smile at her.

Dinner was served sooner in the evening than usual, and Freya had never in her life seen such a spread. The tables groaned under the weight of innumerable platters full of food. Roast goose, fat glazed hams, and plates of sliced venison dotted the tables. She hadn’t realized how many different ways one could prepare potatoes, but they all seemed to be laid out on the table here, along with a variety of cooked vegetables of all shapes and colors. Round loaves of crusty bread and herbed butter were everywhere in easy reach, and tureens of thick soups steamed their savory aromas into the air.

After cleaning his plate twice, Cullen finally leaned back, loosening the laces on his waistband slightly and rubbing his stomach.

“And this,” he said, pausing to discretely stifle a soft burp, “is why dinner is served early. Gives you plenty of time to laze around and digest things before you have pudding.”  
  
_“Pudding?”_ Freya asked, her eyes wide in disbelief. “Who could eat more after _that?_ I never want to see food again.”

“You’ll change your mind when you see all the pies.”

When everyone had eaten their fill, they all retreated to quiet corners of the keep to relax themselves. Freya and Cullen curled up on the settee in the bedroom together. She plopped herself down into his lap, nestling comfortably against him as he wrapped his arms around her. After a few minutes, she felt gentle snores rumble against her back, and she smiled to herself. It wasn’t long before the soporific warmth of his embrace got to her, too, and she closed her drowsy eyelids.

Their nap was interrupted after an hour, Sera’s loud, excited knocking and shouts through the bedroom door alerting them to dessert being served in the dining hall. Cullen’s prediction was true--when Freya saw the selection of sweets laid out on the table, she found herself unable to resist sampling a few of them, in spite of how full she still felt. More mulled wine accompanied the plates of cookies, cakes, tarts, and pies, and they lingered in the dining hall late into the evening, everyone talking and laughing merrily together.

On the way back to their quarters, Dorian handed Freya an oddly shaped bundle the size of an orange and a small box, both wrapped in silver paper.

“Open the box by yourself,” he told her, tipping her a wink.  
  


When they finally stumbled up to the bedroom again, Freya tucked the box away for later as Cullen carried their mugs of wine to the desk. She took the other gift and carefully unwrapped it. Inside, Dorian had wadded more paper around a small carved quartz figurine with long ears and a round ball of a tail.

“For My Favorite Rabbit,” said a tag around its neck in the mage’s neat handwriting. Freya snorted, cupping it in her hand.

“Cullen, look,” she said, holding out the figure. He examined it, then read the message with a chuckle.

“That’s cute,” he told her, handing it back with a smile. She set it on her desk, then turned to Cullen.

“I have something for you,” she said, grinning. He looked surprised.

“I thought you said you didn’t get me anything,” he replied. “You didn’t have to. I wasn’t expecting it.”

“After what you did for _me?”_ asked Freya, gesturing at the windows. “I wanted to.”

She pointed at the bed. “You sit and close your eyes. I couldn’t wrap it.”

Cullen obediently sat on the bed, shutting his eyes tight. Freya carefully knelt down, and Cullen heard something scrape softly across the floor as she pulled it out from under the bed. He felt a heavy object being laid across his knees.

“You can look now.”

He opened his eyes. In his lap was a beautifully crafted leather scabbard, a gleaming silver hilt sticking out of it.

“Freya,” he said, his jaw dropping. “You got… How did you know I wanted a new sword?”

“Blackwall mentioned that you’d said something in passing weeks ago. I forgot all about it until after we got back, when Bull said something... _mostly_ unrelated. So I commissioned Harritt and Dagna to make you one. Pull it out, look at it.”

He held it closer, examining the roaring lion’s face molded into the pommel, the texture of the mane wrapping all the way around.

“It’s so intricate,” he breathed, pulling it out of the sheath. The blade caught the firelight, glare bouncing off the shining surface to cast spots of light on the wall behind him. A short phrase was etched into the fuller of the blade. He squinted, running his fingers over the words. “This is in Dalish.”

 _“Sou’nin Vheraan_ _,”_ she said. “‘The Wrath of the Lion.’”

Looking up at her words, he pursed his lips.

“Wow,” he said quietly.

“It’s something Cole said to me the day you left for Wycome. ‘They will know the wrath of the Lion.’ I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since.”

“It’s… powerful,” he said, touching the etching again. He moved his hand to the braided leather grip.

“Maker, Freya, this leather is soft as velvet.”

She grinned at him.

“Yes, well,” she said, “It’s been broken in quite well, all over Thedas. It’s been to the Fade twice. It was there on the parapets the day you kissed me for the first time. And it went with us to that lake in Honnleath, the day you gave me your coin. It also spent an evening on the floor of your old bedroom.”

“Are you telling me this is from a pair of--”

“My pants, yes,” she said, smiling with a sly twinkle in her eye. “They were my favorite pair. I ripped the ass out of them while we were in Dirthavaren, though, and you’d have to be a fool to throw away good leather, so I was just waiting for a good use for them. There’s plenty extra when that wears out, and Dagna showed me how to rewrap the hilt when it needs it.”

Cullen chuckled.

“I’ve heard that it’s tradition among courtly ladies to give their knights favors to carry," she went on. "This one’s built right into your sword. You can think of me the next time you cut off a Red Templar’s head."

“How _romantic,”_ he said, raising an eyebrow, and Freya laughed. She bit her lip, looking at him nervously.

“Do you like it?” she asked. He looked up at her, meeting her gaze for several seconds before he spoke.

“Nobody has ever given me anything like this before,” he said, looking back down at the weapon. “I love it, Freya. It’s _amazing.”_

He stood, taking a step toward her and kissing her sweetly, then tucking her into a tight hug.

She pulled away, beaming up at him. Her smile faltered a bit when she saw his face.

“I told you the other day that I still had something else for you to open tonight,” he said, feeling his heart quicken a little. “I suppose it’s your turn.”

Freya looked at his expression. It wasn’t the typical one you gave someone when you were about to present them with a gift. There was no excitement there, she noticed. It was almost like… dread? Sadness? She couldn’t quite place it.

“Sit down,” he instructed in a quiet voice, and she did, feeling a nervous squirming in the pit of her belly that had come over her suddenly at seeing that look.

Cullen leaned his new sword carefully against the wall next to the bed, then crossed over to the tall armoire. He lifted a hand up to the top of it, groping around for something. He pulled down a thick rectangular parcel wrapped in red, handling it carefully-- almost _reverently,_  she thought to herself.

When he sat at her side on the bed and placed it gently in her lap, she realized that what she had first mistaken for paper was, in actuality, thick red canvas with a gold stripe woven across it, secured around the object inside with knotted twine.

“Cullen...” she said, running her fingers over the fabric. “This is from an aravel sail.”

She looked up at him, her gaze full of questions, but he just looked back at her with that same doleful expression.

“Go on,” he told her, his voice barely above a whisper. “Open it, and then I’ll explain.”

She pulled at the knot in the twine with her finger nails, prying the looped fibers loose. As her shaking fingers pulled back the fabric, she saw a familiar pattern tooled beautifully into rich green leather--the worn cover of a book.

Breath catching in her throat, she raised her palm to her mouth, realizing what she held in her hands and why Cullen had looked so sad. She traced her fingers over the curling vines embossed onto the cover, then slowly opened it to the first page.

 

_Journal of Lailani Harea Lavellan_

_Clan Healer_

 

She ran her hand across the letters written in her mother’s familiar hand. Hot tears brimmed and coursed freely over her eyelids, blurring her vision.

She turned the page and saw the simple family tree her mother had outlined at the front of the journal, reading the names and birthdates of her grandparents, then her mother and father. Dates of death also accompanied her grandparents’ and father’s names. Written underneath her parents in a horizontal line were three more names:

 

_Freya Lailani Lavellan_

_21 Wintermarch, 9:14 Dragon_

 

_Aronhalaan Atisumis Lavellan_

_30 Solace, 9:24 Dragon_

 

_Sallanehn Atisumis Lavellan_

_5 Cloudreach, 9:31 Dragon_

 

 _“Ara isa'ma'linel,”_ she whispered, touching their names. “My little brothers.”

Her mother had left plenty of space under their names--the place where she would have recorded her grandchildren someday, Freya sadly realized.

“I didn’t think I would ever see this book again” she said, looking at Cullen, her voice thick with emotion. “How did you…?”

“A caravan arrived last week, a few days before you returned,” he told her around the lump in his throat. “Everything we were able to recover from Clan Lavellan came back in wagons. It was all catalogued along with descriptions of the...”

He trailed off, then swallowed hard. _Maker,_ he thought. He’d almost said the word _bodies._

“...Along with descriptions of the people the possessions were found near. It’s all being stored safely, waiting for you to go through it when you’re ready. But I thought you would want to see the things we knew had belonged to your mother.”

Turning over leaf after leaf of paper, she looked at her mother’s words filling the pages in a mixture of Dalish and Trade tongue: descriptions of her days raising her children and tending to the elves in their clan, the birth stories of babies she’d delivered, detailed recipes for potions and salves. In several of the margins, there were simplistic little pictures and words written in childish hand. Freya brushed a thumb over them.

“She used to let us draw in it, so long as we didn’t mark over what she wrote,” she said, the ghost of a smile on her lips through her tears. “It made the book more valuable, she said.”

She turned the page, and there, taking up a whole leaf, was her own childish handwriting above a crude likeness of herself holding the hand of a taller woman with the same wavy hair. A young Freya had scrawled three words in huge letters across the top of the page: 

_AR LATH MAMAE_

  
Freya froze, staring, then choked a breath and bowed her head into her hands. Cullen hesitated for a brief second, then reached out to draw her close, and she let him hold her as she collapsed into his embrace. She let out a low, halting wail, broken by sobs that wracked her body, and he felt he could almost hear in that awful sound her heart splitting wide, pouring out all the sorrow it had been carrying since the day they had heard of the clan’s fate.

He found himself rocking her gently, stroking his hand over her hair as deep shuddering breaths rasped from her lips, her shoulders shaking against his chest. A draft in the room brushed a chill over two wet tracks that had trailed down his own cheeks. He didn’t speak, not knowing the words to express the way he felt at seeing her ripped open like this again, not wanting to interrupt her grief with platitudes that were meaningless against the tide of her sadness. He just cradled her there silently until it ebbed away, her sobs turning to quiet sniffles.

When she finally pulled back, her eyes nearly lost behind puffy red lids, he dug into his pocket and pulled out a soft handkerchief, handing it to her. She took it and dabbed at her eyes. Looking down, she saw that a fat tear had escaped and fallen onto the book, pooling on top of the drawing.

 _“Fenedhis!”_ she whispered hoarsely. “It’s running the ink.”

Cullen reached over without a second thought and carefully blotted the page with the sleeve of his tunic, staining the fabric blue-black.

“Oh,” said Freya, frowning as she drew a hiccupping breath. “I could have used the hankie, Cullen. Now your shirt’s ruined.”

“I didn’t even think about the handkerchief,” he said. “There are a thousand tunics in Thedas. There’s only one of that book.”

She looked at the blotch on the page where her decades-old drawing was now interrupted by the wet stain, the ink feathered and bleeding. Freya knew her mother would have told her that, too, made the book more valuable. It was another addition to the manuscript, a punctuation mark born of raw emotion.

“There’s something else,” Cullen said, shifting his weight. He stuck his hand in his other pocket, fishing around. When he pulled it out, she saw a small silver ring between his fingers. A traditional Dalish knotwork pattern had been molded into it, a cord without a beginning or an end that wrapped over and under itself.  He held it out to her.

“My mother’s _saota_ ring,” she said, taking it from him. She cupped it in her palm, turning it with one finger. “She never took this off, especially after my father died. That must mean…”

She looked up at him, asking with her eyes the question she couldn’t bring her lips to form.

“She was… found,” Cullen said, nodding.

He recalled with a sharp pang the report he’d read about Lailani’s body, the real reason he’d singled out these possessions to give to her personally.

The description had been clinical and graphic, written by someone objective and unconnected to the clan who had no attachment to the woman whose remains they were recounting on paper. He had asked some of his men to go over the reports and rewrite them with vague descriptions of the Lavellan elves--hair color, vallaslin, other unique marks, clothing. Clues to their identities, but nothing that would give Freya any inkling of how violent their deaths had been, or what might have been done to the bodies after. If she ever wanted to see the original reports, he would have them available--all except for her mother’s. He’d read it once, then thrown it impulsively into the fire, watching the paper burn with a sickened rage twisting his gut.

“What happened to her remains? To… to _all_ of my people?”

“They were buried in the Free Marches, in a glade, surrounded by tall trees. We plan to have a marker placed there, but we haven’t had it crafted yet. We thought you should write the inscription.”

Freya looked down at the little circle of silver again, picking it up and placing it onto the slender ring finger of her right hand. It slid perfectly into place, as though it had been made for her. All her life, people had told her that she was her mother in miniature. Now that she was grown, even their fingers were the same size. The bittersweet realization brought a sad smile to her lips.

“I’m sorry I waited so long to give these to you,” Cullen said, and she looked up to see an ashamed expression on his face. “In retrospect, it was incredibly selfish of me. When you got back, all I wanted was to have a few happy days with you before I had to see you shattered again, and… I just decided in my own head that Satinalia was a good excuse to give them to you. But these aren’t _presents._ They’re your family’s things. _Your_ things. Maker, I’m so stupid sometimes. Forgive me, Freya.”

She leaned over and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“It’s okay,” she said in a small voice near his ear. “I’m just glad to have them. I didn’t think I’d ever have anything but my memories. Now... I have some of _her_ memories, too.”

She broke away from him, sitting back and closing the book gingerly. She ran her fingertips over the tooled ivy leaves again, then set it on the bedside table. There was so much there she wanted to read and absorb, but exhaustion had hit her like a stone wall, and all she could think was how much she wanted to sleep.

Cullen read the fatigue etched into her features. In silence, they kicked their boots off, letting them fall to the floor next to the bed. Without undressing, they both tucked themselves under the covers, and he invited her back into his arms with a wordless gesture. She curled against him, still sniffling periodically through her congested nose. He ran soft fingers over her shoulder and kissed her hair affectionately, feeling her breaths against his chest slowing to a regular, measured rhythm. He lay awake long after she fell asleep, watching the fire in the grate burn to embers, the familiar throbbing aches of withdrawal pulsing in his muscles.

  
He wouldn’t wake her, he told himself, no matter how bad it got. It was his turn to keep vigil tonight.


	11. Faltering Faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _But still my heart is heavy_   
>  _with the hate of some other man's beliefs._
> 
> _Always a well-dressed fraud_   
>  _who wouldn't spare the rod,_   
>  _never for me._
> 
> _-Hozier, "Foreigner's God"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for implied rape/non-con.

The dull thumping sounds of a blade striking a practice dummy floated up to Cassandra in her room above the armory, interrupting her thoughts as she worked. Setting down her quill, she gave her arms a stretch and rose, crossing to the window.

Cullen was in the courtyard below, swinging his sword aggressively at one of the human-shaped figures, which was already missing an arm and a good deal of its straw innards. Angry sounds and large white puffs of breath issued from him in the frigid morning air. Pursing her lips, Cassandra watched her friend for a moment longer before grabbing her cloak and walking down the steps.

By the time she reached him outside, the first dummy had been completely pulverized, and he was starting on a second.

“What did they ever do to you?” Cassandra asked, raising an eyebrow as she pulled on a pair of gloves.

Cullen dropped his blade to his side, chest heaving.

“Breaking in a new sword,” he said gruffly, wiping his brow. “Satinalia present from Freya.”

“I think it would have been safe to say it works after you destroyed the first target,” she said, coming close to look. She held out a hand, and Cullen passed her the hilt.

She examined the detailed lion’s head on the pommel and the braided grip, then brought it up close to squint at the engraved words. She looked impressed.

“This is very well-made. What does this say?”

“It’s in Dalish. ‘Wrath of the Lion.’”

“Well,” Cassandra said, handing the blade back and eyeing the straw carnage scattered in the snow, “that’s certainly appropriate this morning.”

“I gave her the book last night,” he replied, by way of explanation. A look of understanding came over the Seeker’s face.

“I see,” she said. “I figured you’d have done that right away when she came home. Why wait so long?”

“Because I’m a selfish _idiot,”_ he said, raising the sword again. Cassandra stepped back as he swung it angrily into the dummy’s waist.

She recalled that she hadn’t seen either Cullen or the Inquisitor at breakfast, but they hadn’t been the only ones, and it was generally assumed that those absent were simply having a lie-in to recover from the previous day’s festivities.

“Is she okay?” she asked.

“Her entire family and everyone she grew up with were brutally murdered, and she just got a big, fat reminder of that,” he answered, frowning. “I don’t think _‘okay’_ is a possibility in that scenario.”

“There but for the grace of the Maker go all of us.”

Cullen snorted a humorless laugh.

“The last thing I want to hear about this morning is the ‘grace of the Maker.’”

He slashed at the dummy, and straw rained down from a huge gash in its belly. Cassandra was forcibly reminded of the Red Templar Knight-Commander Freya had killed at Wycome, his guts spilled out onto the grass at the top of the hill.

“You don’t believe Andraste set Freya aside, guided her to the Conclave?” she asked. “That she was being watched out for?”

“To believe that would mean that Freya’s family _wasn’t_ worth watching out for, that somehow their lives were less worthy of saving. Why? Because they were Dalish? If that’s the ‘Maker’s grace,’ I want _nothing_ to do with it.”

“We cannot begin to know the Maker’s plan, Cullen.”

“Oh, don’t pull the ‘Maker works in mysterious ways,’ bullshit on me. Not today. I saw birthdates, in her mother’s journal. Her littlest brother was _ten years old_ , Cass. _Ten.”_

“Their deaths were unnecessary and I cannot begin to fathom the sadness she must feel,” said Cassandra, “but they are at peace, and she must feel better to have some clos--”

 _“Peace?”_ Cullen asked, his voice rising. “Cass, don’t talk to me about peace. You didn’t read those reports, you have _no_ idea.”

Bits of phrases from Lailani’s description rose in his mind.  _Body shows signs of flaying… Examination findings suggest limb was removed prior to death… Violation of body in a sexual manner, possibly postmortem? Unsure._

“Nothing about their deaths was peaceful, do you hear me? _Nothing!_ Her people died _screaming.”_ He gave the sword a furious swing, and the head of the dummy rolled off, thudding in the snow. “And you and I both know what the Chantry says about those who turn from the Maker. According to what we’ve been taught, those elves are lost in the Void. That’s not peace, either.”

Cassandra looked at her friend sadly, unsure of what to say to this. It was true that, according to the Chant, those that worshipped other gods would not be granted a place at the Maker’s side. Up until now, she hadn’t really given much thought to that point. The Chant was the Chant. You didn’t challenge the words of the Maker. But nobody who interacted with the Inquisitor for more than a minute could argue that she wasn’t a good, kind-hearted person, regardless of personal beliefs.

It raised all sorts of questions about who was deserving of eternal happiness, questions she’d always responded to with the usual platitudes about trusting in the Maker’s wisdom. Now, seeing things from Cullen’s perspective, she understood how all those words suddenly rang a bit false. She could see how this would test anyone’s faith, let alone someone so close to Freya.

“This is really affecting you,” Cassandra said quietly. Cullen looked up at her.

“She looked just like her,” he said. “Her mother, Lailani.”  
  
“Freya has mentioned the resemblance,” she replied, nodding slightly.

“Not just _resemblance,_ Cassandra. She’s practically her mirror image, aside from the tattoos. In the report, it described…” He trailed off momentarily, trying to separate in his mind the graphic descriptions of torture from the rest of it. “They were the same height, the same build. Same hair. Same green eyes. All I could think about when I read it was that it could have been _her._ In my mind, picturing what they did... it _was_ her.”

His voice was threatening to break, and he paused, taking a deep breath.

“And on top of that, I had to watch her heart shatter all over again last night. I don’t know what to do with all of this right now, Cass. I just know that I don’t want to hear anything about Andraste, or the Maker’s light, or any of that other shit at the moment.”

“I understand,” she said, nodding. She took a hesitant step toward him. “What can I do, Cullen? How can I help?”

Cullen wiped his brow again, lifting his sword.

“You can set up another dummy.”


	12. Era’mana’seithen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And I've never loved a darker blue_   
>  _than the darkness I have known in you..._
> 
> _'Cause there's no better love_   
>  _that's laid beside me, there's no better love_   
>  _that justifies me, there's no better love._   
>  _So darling, darling._   
>  _Feel better, love._
> 
> _\--Hozier, "Better Love"_

Freya knew it was going to be a bad night before they even got into bed. She watched the Commander undress, saw the half-moons of sweat around his collar and under his arms. He was swallowing too often. The way he moved told her that his muscles were already aching.

She walked her mother’s journal to the book case, tucking it in carefully at the end of a line of other leather-bound tomes. She’d been reading it for most of the day, lost in its yellowing pages. Letting a finger stroke lovingly down the spine, she turned.

Where the book had been sitting on her bedside table, she now set her wash basin full of cool, clean water, along with a soft cloth and a couple of slices of ginger root. Cullen watched her preparing.

“You can already tell,” he said. He hadn’t phrased it as a question.

“Yes,” she said quietly, pulling the blankets and sheets back on the bed. “I think you wore yourself out too much today, _ma'nehn._ All that sword practice.”

“Perhaps,” he said, though he knew this likely wasn’t the reason for the oncoming episode at all. He undid his pants and slid them onto the floor, then crossed to get into bed.

Freya undressed herself quickly. She didn’t remove her tunic tonight. He knew she'd made this decision purposefully, having already calculated in her mind how often she’d be getting in and out of bed to tend to him. He hated that these were things she was now having to take into consideration on a regular basis.

Sliding under the sheet next to him, Freya handed Cullen a slice of ginger. He took it gratefully and began to grind it between his molars, welcoming the now-familiar spicy taste. The wound on his arm prickled as he chewed, and he rubbed at it absently.

“Don’t bother it,” she scolded gently as she pushed his hand away. She leaned over and examined the cut. It had scabbed over, and the redness around it had disappeared.

“Damn thing itches like nobody’s business,” he said around the mouthful of ginger.

“Good,” she replied. “That means it’s healing.”

“It’s maddening, though” he said, frowning.

“Well, you’re the one who stubbornly insisted on having it,” she said, giving him a small smile.

“Scars are worth keeping.” He looked over at Freya, eyeing the jagged pink line on her temple, a souvenir from their battle near Wycome. “They’re good reminders.”

“Do you know the Elvhen word for ‘scar?’” Freya asked. Cullen shook his head. _“Era’mana'seithe._ ‘History on the skin.’ I can understand the value of remembering what’s happened to our bodies, sometimes.”

She looked up at his face, brushing her hand against his rough cheek and running a thumb over the line that interrupted the stubble above his lips.

“What’s this one from?” she asked. “I’ve always wondered.”

Her touch sent a small tingle through him, in spite of the aches. He parked the piece of ginger between his teeth and his cheek so he could talk freely.

“I got it when the fighting erupted in Kirkwall," he began. "The first time, that is, with the Qunari. One of their gaatlok bombs went off nearby, and I got hit with a flying shard of pottery. Sliced my lip right open. When I got back to the Gallows, one of the mages saw me bleeding, and she very kindly asked if I wanted her to heal it. ...I turned her down.”

A shadow of anger crossed his face.

“I was so mistrusting of mages that I denied their offers of help, and so did many others. Meredith’s paranoia had spread like wildfire among the Templars. Even the most rational knights had begun to think the mages in the Circle were all just abominations waiting to happen, and I, well... I was a fool just like all the rest of them. I got treated instead by a regular medic, sewn up with needle and thread. At first, I was incredibly self-conscious about it. I _hated_ it. I’ve grown to appreciate its symbolism over the years, though. Now, when I see it, it reminds me not to make my decisions based on prejudice. It reminds me not to be the man I used to be.”

He looked down at his belly, to the long stripe across his waist that marked the place where the Red Templar Knight-Commander had slashed him.

“That one reminds me to think more carefully about my actions. To consider who they affect. That my impulses and instincts aren’t always worth following, and that I have someone by my side to help me decide, to keep me grounded. Someone who won’t let me fight my battles alone.”

He looked up at Freya, meeting her eyes lovingly for a brief second before returning his gaze to the healing dagger wound.

“This one...” He flexed his forearm. “I guess I just wanted one that would remind me of a _happy_ moment, for once.”

“Hopefully none of our future happy moments start with me sticking a knife in you,” she joked, the corner of her lip twitching. He gave her a crooked smile, then swallowed hard again.

“Hey, will you do that thing with your thumbs?” he asked her. “Please? Nausea's bad tonight.”

“Of course I will,” she said, moving her hands to his wrists.

They were both quiet for a moment as he resumed working the hunk of root around in his mouth and she focused on his pressure points. He could feel an unpleasant warmth intensifying in his body, and the aching throb of his muscles was worsening.

He pulled his arms back once his stomach had stopped turning somersaults, and he looked over at the pitcher.

“Thank you," he told her, giving her hand a squeeze. "Could I please have some water? I think I can keep it down now.”

She got up to fill the ceramic cup.

“Little sips,” she reminded him softly as she handed it to him. Placing a hand over his forehead, she let out a long breath through her nostrils.

“Do you think we’re going to have to use more of that fever potion?” he asked her, the dread obvious in his voice. She was already dunking the cloth into the basin.

“We’ll see how warm you get, love,” she said, wringing it out and placing it over his forehead. He leaned back against the headboard. “I want to try just keeping you cool myself, first. I dislike that stuff as much as you do.”

“Forget the cloth and the water. I just want to go lay on the balcony, naked, in the snow,” he told her.

“Well, it would feel good at first, but then we’d have the opposite problem,” she said. “You can’t cool people down too fast, or their bodies sort of get confused, and then they very quickly get _too_ cold, instead. Fevers are tricky things.”

“I wasn’t serious, Freya,” he said, looking amused at her very matter-of-fact explanation.

“Oh,” she said, now freshening the cloth and moving it over his body. “I thought maybe you were actually floating it as an idea.”

“No, I don’t need to give you any pointers. You know what you’re doing. I know you’re trying to help, even when what you give me makes me feel like I’ve swallowed an entire desert, or like you’re sticking hot pokers on my arm.”

She smiled sympathetically at him.

“Healing isn’t always a relief, _ma'nehn,”_ she said. “Sometimes it’s itching, or burning, or sweating out poison, or bones slowly knitting themselves back together. Healing hurts sometimes."

“After all this is over, Freya, if you ever decide to open a clinic or something,” he said, “do _not_ make that your slogan.”

She laughed, nodding.

“Noted.”

Cullen was breathing faster than usual, she noticed, likely from the pain worsening. She put the cloth down. She wouldn’t be able to use the warming oil on him when he was this hot, especially not if she wanted to skip using the fever potion tonight. She didn’t much care for having to choose which of his agonizing symptoms to treat over the others, but the fever was the one that really concerned her. She would have to see if touch alone would help.

She crossed to her kit and took out a large brown bottle.

“What’s that?” Cullen asked.

“Just plain oil,” she said, bringing it back to the bed. “I can’t risk the good stuff with a fever, unfortunately. Hopefully this will still ease the ache a little.”

He made to lie down, but she put a hand on his leg.

“Why don’t you stay sitting up for now? That way I can switch to the cooling cloth if I need to, without you having to flip over.”

He nodded and scooted forward on the bed to allow her to sit up on her knees behind him. She started kneading at the base of his skull, working her oiled fingers into the muscles. He let out a long moan, rolling his neck in a wide circle as he realized just how much his workout that morning had actually taken out of him.

“Cullen,” he heard her say after a moment. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Mmm?”

“Your symptoms… they seem to have gotten so much worse after I left for Dirthavaren. Nothing  _happened,_ did it? While I was away?”

And there it was.

Cullen privately thought to himself in this moment that he wished Freya was just a little less clever.

Josephine, Leliana, and Cassandra had all noticed that he had gotten worse during her excursion, of course, but they all put it down to him missing Freya. And, at first, that had been true. He wasn’t as good at coping when she was away, and they all knew it. But the symptoms themselves hadn’t really been any worse than usual.

And then the wagons had arrived, and he’d read the reports. And his mind had gone to literal hell.

He swallowed hard, wondering how much he should tell her.

“I told you that the caravan full of the clan’s things arrived several days before you,” he told her.

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, before that… I was just having a difficult time managing my episodes. It’s always harder without you.”

Freya frowned, sliding the heels of her hands outward across his muscular shoulders.

“And _after_ it arrived?”

She saw him draw a deep breath.

“The descriptions that were recorded along with all of the clan’s possessions… they weren’t just written for cataloguing purposes. They were detailed reports, meant for us to keep a record of… of how your people died.”

A heavy weight dropped into Freya’s stomach, and her hands froze.

“I’ve had some of my agents work on re-writing them so that when you take inventory, all you’ll know is what the elves themselves looked like, and you can match up what might have belonged to whom. I didn’t want you to have to see all those details unless you wanted to know. But... I read them all myself, first. I still haven’t been able to forgive myself for what happened, and I felt like I had to know, like I _owed_ it to you to take in the full context of their deaths. And it just… it brought up a lot of things from my past I’ve been trying to tamp down. Memories from the Circle, of what happened to me there.”

“Were you going to tell me about this?” she asked quietly, after a pause.

“Yes, of course I was. When you’re ready to go through everything, my plan was to tell you about the original reports. I have them all saved, if you ever want to see them. Except… I burned your mother’s. I shouldn’t have, it was wrong of me to do it, but I was just so sick with anger, and I didn't think. _Maker,_ Freya, the way they described her, the similarities...” His voice faltered slightly. “I couldn’t erase your face from my mind as I read about her."

He paused, struggling to keep his composure.

"You’ve been _dying_ over and over again in my mind, in my dreams, ever since I saw the damned thing... That’s when it started, when things really got worse.”

“Oh, _Cullen,”_ she breathed, coming around to face him again and wrapping her fingers around his palm. They were both quiet for a moment as she absorbed what he’d said. He could feel both of their hands shaking as they clasped them together, and he wasn't sure whose was to blame.

“Does the Inquisition _need_ such detailed records of... whatever was done?” she asked him, her gut now twisting horribly.

“Possibly,” he answered. “If we can stop Samson and bring him in, it could be used as evidence against him, for what he’s done.”

“And after that?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“Pass this off to Leliana,” she said curtly, shaking her head. “Tell her to lock them up, to use them for whatever we need them for, but otherwise they are not to see the light of day. I don’t _ever_ want to see them, or hear about them. I don’t need to know exactly what those monsters did to my people. If it’s bad enough that it’s doing this to you, it’s not something I want to hold in my mind. They’ve gone down the path to the other side, Falon’Din be with them. That’s enough for me.”

Cullen felt her squeeze his hand tightly.

“Oh, sweetheart, why didn’t you tell me sooner? This must have been _horrible_ for you, reliving everything through all this. You didn't have to do this alone.”

“I was much more concerned about how _you’d_ react to it all,” he said. “I didn’t expect it to affect me so drastically, to interfere with my job.”

“Your _job?”_ she asked, incredulous. “No. Cullen, please, just forget about the Inquisition for one second, will you? I’m worried about _you._ This has dredged up so many awful memories for you, weakened you against the withdrawal. It’s dangerous for you to be in this position. That fever the other night terrified me. A bad enough episode could kill you. You didn’t owe me _anything,_ Cullen. And certainly not this. You have to stop punishing yourself for everything that's happened, stop reopening all these wounds."

She brushed her thumb against his lip again, meeting his gaze.

"Sometimes scars _aren’t_ worth keeping _._ It’s okay to let some things heal and not constantly remind yourself of what made them in the first place. Please, tell me you won’t look at those reports again. _Promise_ me.”

He nodded.

“I promise, I won't.” 

It was an easy vow to make. He never wanted to see those words spelled out on paper again. She kissed him softly, the smell of the ginger root sharp on his breath, then threaded her arms around the back of his neck. Despite the uncomfortable warmth still rising in his body, he wrapped his arms across her back and held her tight against him for several long moments.

 _"Ar lath ma, ma'vheraan,"_ she whispered.

 _"Ar lath_ you, too, Freya."

He was rewarded with a quiet laugh. When she pulled away, she planted another kiss on his forehead. His skin was fiery against her lips.

“I hate to tell you this,” she told him, her smile fading, “but I think you are going to have to take that potion again. I don’t want to risk this getting worse tonight, now that I know what we might be dealing with.”

Cullen groaned slightly, dreading the burning thirst he knew was about to accompany his fever breaking.

“I know,” said Freya. Her voice was sympathetic as she brushed his cheek again. “I’m so sorry, _ma’nehn.”_

His eyes flitted back to the place on her temple where a Red Templar’s shield had once caught her by surprise as she raced to fight by his side. All these times she'd been here to pick him up and put him back together, and _she_ was the one saying sorry.

"I'll only take it on one condition," he said, reaching for her arm as she got off the bed. She looked back, surprised.

"What's that?" she asked.

"If I can't apologize for _needing_ your help, you can't apologize for _giving_ it."

She gave him another small smile. Leaning over, she pressed her lips briefly to his again before running a hand through his damp hair.

"That sounds like a fair enough deal to me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who nerd out over conlangs like I do and might be cross-referencing my Elvish: there was no word for "scar" in Project Elvhen, so I made one up. :)


	13. A Cure for Ennui (NSFW)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Offer me that deathless death._   
>  _Oh, good God,_   
>  _let me give you my life._
> 
> _\--Hozier, "Take Me to Church"_

Winter crept by slowly after the holiday. Blizzards continued to bury the keep in thick crusts of ice and snow, and the soldiers would barely get the parapets shoveled before the next storm set in. There was no shortage of material for the kitchen staff to melt into drinking water, but the passages remained impassable, and it wasn’t looking like that would change anytime soon.

Cullen watched his men finish their practice, his voice hoarse from shouting in the cold morning air. As they all marched back to the barracks to warm themselves up, he made his way back to the keep, grumbling to himself.

The monotony of his routine was starting to get to him. With no way in or out of the Frostbacks, there was little change from one day to the next. Breakfast, drills, requisitions and reports, lunch, more requisitions and reports, war table meeting, dinner, and then a small amount of time before bed for recreation. And in a snowbound castle, "recreation" was thin on the ground.

Most nights, he and Freya just sat in bed together quietly, her absorbed in her mother’s journal and him lost in a history book or a treatise on war tactics, both of them just enjoying the comfortable silence of one another’s company. Sometimes she would reach over and hold his hand, wrapping her slender fingers around his. He’d look over, and she’d smile sweetly at him for a brief second and then return to her reading. It made his heart skip around merrily every time.

Other nights, they’d spend their time with their friends. Sometimes they’d join them at the tavern for drinks and raucous storytelling (half of which almost certainly was wildly exaggerated, at best), or they’d all settle in with a cask of wine and play a few hands of Wicked Grace near the fire. But outside those few precious hours of fellowship and fun, life at Skyhold had gotten downright _boring._

Cullen plodded up toward the bedroom door, a sullen expression on his face. He knocked gently as he announced himself, heard Freya’s bright voice calling for him to come in, and pulled the door open. When his heavy steps had carried him all the way up the stairs, he turned toward the center of the room and dragged his eyes off the floor. He stopped mid-step and stared.

Freya was in her tunic and smalls facing the balcony door, bent over with her palms on the floor, walking them backward toward her feet. She looked at him upside-down from between her ankles and gave him a smile.

“Morning, love!” she said.

Cullen laughed at the absurdity of her pose.

“What in the name of the Maker are you _doing_?” he asked her.

“I’m stretching,” she told him. “And, based on how knotted up and tight your muscles always are, you ought to try it sometime.”

He shook his head.

“There’s no way I could get myself into that position. And if I _did_ somehow manage, I’d never be able to come out of it.”

Freya straightened and turned around, pulling her smalls out from between her buttocks.

“They really need to make special underthings for this,” she said, pulling a face. He laughed again. “Want to help me stretch?”

Cullen shrugged, pulling off his mantle and unbuckling his chest plate and pauldrons, eager for a small amount of relief from the heavy armor.

“Not sure how I can be of much help, but okay,” he replied.

Freya lay down on the floor. He walked over and peered down at her.

“Well,” she said, grinning, “get down here.”

He got down on his knees next to her, and she lifted one of her legs.

“Grab onto my calf, and push it up toward my head,” she told him. He did as she asked, leaning over her.

“How do I know when to quit?” he asked.

“I’ll let you know if it gets uncomfortable,” she told him, a slight smirk on her face.

He shrugged and kept pushing, expecting her to stop him at some point. When her knee touched her chest and her leg was lying straight against her body, unable to go further, she smiled.

“I guess that’ll have to do,” she said, closing her eyes and pointing her toes. “Just hold it there for a minute.”

He supposed he should have expected for a dancer’s body to be this flexible, but he was still taken by surprise. She wiggled just a bit under him, trying to get her back comfortable on the stone floor, and as she did so her crotch brushed upward against the front of his pants.

 _Maker's breath._  He blushed slightly, grateful she couldn’t see his face.

He cleared his throat.

“So, why are you so vigorously stretching this morning?” he asked her, casting his mind around for something to keep his mind off what was happening.

“I have practice with Heir before lunch,” she said unenthusiastically.

“Ahh,” Cullen replied. “Your _favorite_. Want me to hang by and watch, just in case she pulls some asinine stunt again?”

He knew she could take care of herself, even against a manic Dalish assassin, but he was hoping for an excuse to ignore the pile of papers on his desk for awhile. Anything for a change in routine.

“It’s going to be pretty tame today, from what she’s told me,” she said. “She’ll probably make me run laps or stairs or something, for conditioning. Then it’s just knife-throwing practice. Other leg?”

Cullen let go of her calf, and she let the first leg down to the floor and lifted the other one. He repeated the action, leaning over to press against her again. There was only a thin strip of soft cloth and his leather pants between them, and he could feel her heat through both. He felt himself stiffening in his pants.

_Shit._

“How were drills?” she asked him, putting an arm behind her head as he pushed her leg against her torso.

“Same as every morning. Soldiers were grumpy, I was grumpy. Everyone’s tired of the routine.”

“I can see that," she said sympathetically. "Do you have any plans for the rest of the day?”

“Requisitions and reports. Just like yesterday, and the day before that. And the day before _that_.”

“I’ve never seen someone make that face over doing paperwork. Is it that bad?”

“Well, it’s just the same shit, every single time. Reports are all alike, requisitions aren’t changing much without you in the field. Rations, med kits and supplies; rations, med kits and supplies. Maker, I feel like I’m going to die of boredom some days. If it weren’t for the fact that it means you’ll have to leave again, I’d welcome spring _tomorrow._ The only thing that breaks it up is the occasional marriage contract from Orlais that ends up on my desk, and those make me want to scream. Wish I knew why all those women were so keen on the Rutherford name. I haven’t got shit outside of my title.”

 _“Ma’vheraan,_ have you been past a _mirror_ lately?” asked Freya, smiling warmly at him. Now he really did turn red. He let out a small, bashful cough, and the action made his erection flex a bit. She felt it press into her groin, and she looked up at him as she realized what had happened. “Oh, goodness… Cullen, I'm so sorry. I didn’t realize this would be so stimulating for you.”

He cleared his throat again.

They hadn’t been intimate since the night before Satinalia, nearly two weeks ago. He’d tried to initiate something once or twice, but with all the emotional upheaval she'd gone through, she’d been unable to make herself want anything to do with it. As soon as she’d said, “I can’t, love,” in that heart-wrenchingly apologetic voice, he’d simply kissed her and wrapped his arms around her, more than content to hold her instead. But _Maker,_ he missed it.

And so did she. Now she was perfectly willing, even _eager_ to, but the timing was terrible _._

“I don’t suppose…” he said, looking at her with a hopeful expression.

“I have to be downstairs to meet Heir in less than half an hour, and I haven’t even gotten my armor on yet. I’d have to clean myself up after and everything. We just don’t have time, love.”

Cullen nodded.

“Okay," he told her. "That’s fine. But... can I please let go of your leg now? This position isn't making it any easier.”

Freya nodded back, and he got off the floor. She watched him turn around, facing away from her.

“You’re not embarrassed, are you?” she asked, picking herself up off the floor and walking up behind him. “Sweetheart, there’s no reason to be.”

He ran a hand over the back of his neck.

“It’s just awkward,” he said. He felt her wrap her arms around his waist. Her breasts were pressed against his back. This was _not_ helping.

And then one of her hands dropped to his waistband, pulling at the fastenings.

“What if I take care of this some _other_ way?” she asked softly.

“Freya, you don’t have to do that,” he said, turning around. “It’s fine. Really.”

“Hmmm,” she said, still tugging the ties of his pants loose in her fingers. “But what if I _want_ to help?”

He swallowed hard, watching her hands. He'd much rather have picked her up and tossed her onto the bed and pleased her breathless, instead, but, well... if she _wanted_ to... who was he to argue? He looked back up at her.

“Only if you really _do--”_

No sooner had permission escaped his lips than she had plunged a hand down the front of his trousers. He reeled a little at her touch, widening his stance to steady himself. She was grinning devilishly up at him. Reaching her other hand up, she pulled him down into a kiss, parting her lips for his tongue to slip through.

Her strokes were firm and slow, her palm sliding over his tip and down his shaft, then back up again. He moaned, and she pulled away from his kiss. He felt slightly dizzy, and he shifted his feet again.

“Do you need to sit?” she asked, noticing him falter, and he nodded. He didn’t see himself staying upright at this rate. He walked over to the sofa, and she tugged his pants down around his boots before he sat. Gently pushing him back into the corner of the settee, she climbed up next to him, kissing him deeply again as she continued her methodical strokes. She could feel him throbbing against her palm.

Her lips moved to his neck, and he tangled his fingers into her braided hair, breathing in her smell. She looked up at him briefly, that smirk still on her face, and then she bent down over him, trailing her tongue over his shaft. Her tunic had billowed out underneath her, and down her neckline he could see the curves of her breasts above her binder. It made him throb harder, and he leaned his head back, looking at the ceiling instead.

Rolling her tongue against his skin, she worked her way up his length slowly. She swirled the flat of her tongue firmly against his frenulum, and he let out a gasp. Her palm stroked against his flesh, wet with saliva. With her other hand, she gently dragged her nails over his thigh, raising the flesh in little bumps. She felt his fingers tighten in her hair, and she smiled.

She took the very tip of him into her mouth, her tongue flicking against him. He was drawing deep breaths, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed hard. She enveloped him with her lips, drawing in the whole head of his cock with a moan that vibrated deliciously against him. His head snapped up again and he opened his eyes, watching her take him in.

She felt him sneaking a hand down over her shirt, his fingers brushing against the hard ridge of the coin tucked into the inside pocket of the tunic, and he felt a pang of affection for her as it did. He groped further down for her breast, rubbing it and kneading it in his palm. His other hand was still wrapped in her hair, mussing her braid and pulling stray waves loose. She glanced up, meeting his eye as she slid her palm over his shaft, twisting it gently back and forth as she pumped it up and down in time with her mouth.

She gave his frenulum another rough flick with her tongue, still looking at him. He let out a small whimper.

 _“Maker,_ Freya,” he said, his voice hoarse. She'd only done this to him once before, and he'd stopped her, choosing instead to bury himself between her thighs on this very couch. Had he known how skilled she was at this, he may not have been so quick to do so.

Letting out another dusky moan around his erection, she drew him in as far as she could, the tip of his cock touching the back of her throat. She swallowed against him, and the undulation of her tongue along his length sent shivers up his spine.

She backed him out of her throat again, sucking at the fleshy head of his cock and swirling her tongue around it. Her hand slid rhythmically against his slick shaft, and he felt himself beginning to buck his hips against her mouth, his palm subconsciously pressing against her head and urging her to go faster. This wasn't going to be a prolonged endeavor.

“Can you go a little harder?” he asked breathlessly, and she eagerly obliged, sucking at him more forcefully and rolling her tongue firmly against all his sensitive places. He felt her other hand sneak underneath his shaft to gently cup and massage his balls, and he gasped again as it sent sparks through him, little lights popping behind his eyelids.

His groin was warm and tingling, and he could feel himself nearing the edge of his climax. Freya watched him panting, felt him gripping her breast tightly in his hand as his hips jerked upward faster. She vibrated her voice against him again, letting out a long “Mmmmmmmm” sound, and he moaned back at her, his eyes locked on his cock sliding between her lips.

“Oh, _fuck,_ Freya,” he breathed, and she gave him a hard suck, her tongue flicking wantonly across his skin as she pumped firmly with her hand. He let out another whimper.

And then she felt his cock spasm as he gasped hard, his breath coming out in a string of whispered swears, and her mouth was flooded with the taste of his seed, hot and bitter and salty. She swallowed it down, still working her tongue over him as she carried him through his ecstasy. He whispered her name over and over again as he came, jerking against her lips and wringing himself dry.

When he writhed underneath her touch, too sensitive for any more, she gently softened her mouth and let him go, sliding her arms up around his chest and kissing his neck again. Groaning, he brushed his hand over her hair.

“Where was your roar that time, _ma'vheraan?”_ she asked, amused.

“I think you sucked it right out of my lungs,” he told her, still panting.

She giggled, looking up at him. His face was flushed and he had a slack, happy expression, like someone who had just woken up from a pleasant nap. She pressed her soft lips against his stubbled cheek.

“I really need to get my armor on and get downstairs. If I’m late she’ll probably make me wrestle an ogre with my bare hands, or something.”

“Do you want help?” he asked as she hopped off the settee.

"With the ogre?"

Cullen laughed.

"With your _armor_ , dear."

“No, no,” she answered. “I can manage. You just lay there like a pile of Cullen and bask in the afterglow.”

He chuckled again. Far too wiped out to argue, he tucked himself back into his pants and laced them up, then reclined on the sofa.

Wiggling out of her smalls, Freya examined the huge wet spot in the crotch that had grown there while she was attending to Cullen.

“Well, _those_ are useless,” she said, smirking as she tossed them into her closet with the rest of their dirty laundry. She pulled another pair from a drawer and slid them up her thighs.

He watched as she dressed, admiring her lean physique--a thing he felt quite sure he would never tire of doing. She donned her armor quickly, her practiced fingers fastening the leather garments around herself with ease. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she pulled her boots on and began to lace them up.

“I really don’t know how I’m to be expected to get up and go all the way to my office after that,” he told her. “I’m not sure my legs will ever work again.”

She grinned.

“We must all make sacrifices for the Inquisition, _ma’nehn,”_ she said. She walked over to her potion kit and rummaged through her herbs until she found some mint leaves. She popped a couple into her mouth, chewing them, then crossed to him and gave him another soft kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

He smiled at her, squeezing her hand as she turned and walked around the bannister, descending the stairs. He heard the bedroom door open and close. Groaning, he sat up, his head still a little light from the fast, shallow breaths he had been drawing. He rubbed his eyes as he stood, then stretched his arms luxuriously above his head.

 _Maker, that woman,_ he thought to himself. He grinned, adjusting himself in his pants.

So much for boring mornings.

 


	14. The Orlesians are Coming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock."
> 
> \--Iago, from Shakespeare's _Othello_

A light snow had begun falling by the time Cullen made his way from his office back to the main hall. Freya had finished her training session, having turned several dummies into pin cushions with her throwing knives.

This lesson seemed to have gone quite a bit better than the previous one, wherein Heir had broken Freya’s nose in an attempt to get her to fight at full potential. There’d still been a tense moment when Cullen had heard a commotion and looked out his window to check on their progress. Freya had been gesturing wildly at a practice dummy and shouting, and Heir had her hands crossed over her chest, yelling back. They were too far away for him to hear what was being said, but Cullen was about two seconds away from walking down there to mediate when Freya had finally thrown her hands up in frustration and marched over to the dummy, yanking the knives out of it and coming back to her position to throw again. He saw her glance at Heir before she aimed the first one, and he knew exactly the glare she was giving the other elf. The assassin was going to have to learn to stop poking the bear, eventually, he’d thought to himself as he walked back to his desk. Freya’s patience wouldn’t last forever.

Lunch was a simple affair that day, plates of cheese and bread and sausage lining the tables along with bowls of preserved fruit in heavy syrups. The kitchen was quickly getting low on fresh produce, and Cullen thought longingly of the last time he’d eaten a crisp slice of apple in Freya's bed.

The Inquisitor joined him on the bench several minutes after he’d already started eating, her hair even more tousled than it had been after leaving their chambers a couple of hours previous. She’d stripped her armor off, and as she sat down he caught a whiff of sweat and snow mixed with her usual smells.

“How was it?” he asked her as she reached for a couple of slices of bread. She rolled her eyes.

 _“Infuriating,_ as always,” she replied. “She didn’t want me to use my gloves, because they ‘greatly reduce my accuracy.’” She mimicked the assassin’s accent as she spoke, angrily stabbing sausage on a fork. “And then, when I fumbled my knives because my fingers were frozen, she called me clumsy.”

He watched her chewing angrily, her nose wrinkling up as she glared into the middle distance.

“I sunk _every single knife_ into my target's vital points one round, and she still said it was sloppy! I swear, some days I just want to chuck her over the ramparts and be done with it.”

“I wouldn’t say anything,” Cullen said, shrugging. She gave him a grin, patting his hand.

“You’re a gem, Cullen. My sweet and loyal accessory to murder.”

They finished their meal together, chatting with their companions about plans for the evening, which apparently were to include a visit to the Herald’s Rest for some ale. Once their plates were clean, Freya and Cullen made their way to the hall that led past Josephine’s office to the war room.

Their strategy meetings, as a rule, were as boring as requisitions these days, but mercifully brief. There wasn’t much to say at present, other than continuing to plot out the best place for Freya and her team to head once the worst of the winter storms had passed. And it looked like there was still plenty of time for that.

They each delivered their usual status reports, which were almost identical to the previous day’s. Cullen handed off a letter from Orlais to Josephine to handle, blushing as he did. She took it and glanced at it, tutting.

“So _popular,_ our Commander,” she said, tucking it into the stack on her clipboard.

“Oh, shut up, Josie,” he mumbled, fidgeting with the pommel of his sword.

“While we are on the subject of Orlais,” the Ambassador said, a smile curling her lips, “We have some planning to do for a visit as soon as the roads are passable.”

“We’re going to Orlais?” asked Leliana, frowning. "Why?"

“Well, no,” said Josephine, shooting a nervous look at Freya. “Orlais is coming to _us._ I have invited Marquis Briala and some dignitaries from Halamshiral to visit Skyhold and see our operations firsthand. They sent a request, and after all the aid they've given us, I did not feel like we could turn them down.”

Freya groaned. She had been looking forward to the passages opening back up. It would mean leaving Cullen behind, of course, but she was so restless being cooped up in the keep that even that would have been bearable for a little while if it meant she could go someplace with open land again. Now, she’d be stuck at Skyhold for another week or more, entertaining Orlesians. She massaged the bridge of her nose with one hand.

“I certainly hope they aren’t expecting banquets and extravagant dances,” said Cullen with a frown. “This is a military operation, a castle full of soldiers. We don’t have balls.”

Freya’s head snapped up at this, and she and Leliana looked at one another for a brief second before dissolving into giggles. Even Josephine had put a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. Cullen had flushed a deep crimson again.

“Oh, _Maker’s sake_. Grow up, all of you,” he said. Freya put a hand on his pauldron, leaning on him for support as she laughed, and the corner of his mouth twitched up just a bit. “Okay, okay. Professionalism. We’re a very _serious_ organization here, ladies.”

“Yes,” Leliana agreed, nodding. _“Far_ too serious for things like balls.”

He rolled his eyes as the women all began another round of giggles. Looking down at his gauntlets, he waited patiently for them to compose themselves.

“Are you _quite_ finished now?” he asked Freya once she’d stopped shaking with laughter, straightening up and wiping her eyes. She nodded, still smiling.

“If it means not having to go back to the Winter Palace anytime soon, I’ll take having Briala visit for a few days,” she said resignedly.

“I’m still amazed that anyone could spend time at Halamshiral and not enjoy themselves at least a _little,”_ said Josephine.

“Oh, yeah,” said Freya, nodding. “Palace dripping in gold, built on the bones of my ancestors. What’s not to love?”

Josephine inclined her head.

“Point taken, Inquisitor. In any case, Briala will no doubt have less lavish expectations that the Empress, and I know she has been working hard to have more elven representation in Orlais’ governmental affairs. I expect there will be enough common ground there for you to get along well.”

“I liked her okay,” Freya said with a shrug. “Other than the duplicitous blackmail attempts, of course.”

“Well, that’s just a normal Saturday night in Orlais,” said Leliana.

“Quite,” said Josephine, passing out a sheet of paper she had copied out for each of them. “Here is the proposed itinerary for her visit, along with menu options.”

“No snails,” said Cullen appreciatively, nudging Freya.

“Oh, I’d resign,” she said with a frown. “I’d pack my things and happily go back to being a nobody in the Free Marches, and Corypheus could have you all.”

Leliana snorted, reading over the list.

“It says here you want her to shadow me?” she asked Josephine, looking up with a furrowed brow.

“Yes, just for part of a day. She’s the Orlesian spymaster, so she has expressed interest in seeing how you run your agents.”

“That could put her in a position to see some sensitive information,” said Cullen, looking disconcerted at the idea.

“Right,” said Josephine. “Which is why we’re going to fake it for a few hours that day. She probably won’t know the difference.”

“If she’s a _good_ spymaster, she will,” said Freya. “She may even expect it.”

“In which case, we will have learned something very important about Briala,” agreed Josephine. “Either way, really, we find out what her capabilities are, and even with Orlais being our ally currently, it’s good to know where there are strengths and where there are weaknesses.”

Josephine turned to Cullen.

“You’ll probably recognize the name of one of the women accompanying Briala. She is a nobleman’s daughter from Halamshiral. Lady Aceline Marchand. You received one of those... _letters_ from her, several weeks ago.”

“But surely you turned it down for me?” asked Cullen, looking mortified as he scanned the paper again.

“Indeed,” replied the Ambassador. “As gently and firmly as I could. No doubt she is coming to try to change your mind.”

Freya gave him a sideways glance, unable to decide whether she felt amused, sympathetic, or ever so slightly jealous. Not that she had reason to fear Cullen’s fidelity. She knew how he felt about Orlesians in general, and even after they’d hung all over him at the Winter Palace, it had been her bedroom he’d ended up in. Shaking and burning up from withdrawal, mind you, but still. _Her_ bed. And yet, something about a woman who was probably up to her eyeballs in diamonds and velvet coming to her castle to try to woo her lover still made her stomach squirm uncomfortably. Maybe the feeling was more than just slight, she realized.

“Well,” said Leliana, “this ought to be an interesting week for all of us. Let’s hope we have some time once the roads clear before they arrive to get some decent food back in the keep. By then, we’ll be down to stewed beef and frozen peaches.”  
  
The four of them tucked their papers away and gathered up their things. Cullen looked like he’d just swallowed a sack of bees.  
  
“Thank the Maker we’re drinking after dinner,” he told her on the way out of the war room. “I’m going to need it.”


	15. Never Have I Ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Just a little rush, babe,_   
>  _to feel dizzy, to derail the mind of me._
> 
> _\--Hozier, "Sedated"_

The Herald’s Rest was bright and warm, a welcome respite for the gang of friends that had slogged through yet another storm to get from the main hall to the little tavern. They stomped the snow from their boots and found an empty table, while Dorian sidled up to the bar and ordered a round of ales for everyone.

“Better get me a double shot of whisky while you’re at it,” Cullen called to Cabot, and the barman looked surprised.

“Someone’s skipping straight to tipsy tonight, eh?” he asked.

The Commander smirked. “Trust me, it’s necessary.”

Varric, Sera, Bull, Cassandra, Cullen, Freya, and Bull’s right-hand man, Krem, all took their seats, some dropping their cloaks over the backs of their chairs while others kept theirs on, blowing warm air into their hands.

Freya shivered even with the cloak on. She’d never been keen on cold weather, and being so light made her extra sensitive to the frigid temperatures of the Frostbacks. She was looking very much forward to the warming effects of alcohol tonight. Noticing her shivers, Cullen leaned over to fasten his mantle around her, giving her a small smile.

“So that elf from Orlais is bringing some rich tit’s daughter with her, just to let her hang all over you?” Sera asked him, frowning. “That seems right shady.”

“I’m not at all a fan, myself, Sera,” sighed Cullen, glancing at Freya. She’d been quiet about the whole affair, but he suspected she felt at least as uncomfortable with the idea as he did. He couldn’t believe Josephine hadn’t been able to persuade Briala against bringing her, but apparently Comte Marchand had donated huge amounts of money to the Inquisition, so her accompaniment was all but guaranteed.

Freya pretended she didn’t hear the conversation. It had been all anyone wanted to talk about since word had gotten around, and if one more person asked her how she felt about it, she thought she would breathe fire.

Bull was giving her a searching sort of look, but he had the good sense not to ask the question everyone else had blurted out at once. She took notice of both of these things, thinking to herself that he must indeed have been a good spy for the Qunari, before he’d been made Tal-Vashoth.

Dorian had returned with Cabot, both of their hands full of mugs of ale, which they passed around. Cullen was also presented with a glass halfway full with amber-colored whisky, which he knocked back in one go.

“Bring another one of those with the next mug, will you?” he asked. Cabot gave him a look as he walked away.

“As you like, Commander,” the barman said over his shoulder. “Just don’t yell at Maryden this time.”

“You _yelled_ at the minstrel?” asked Dorian, his eyebrows raised. “What on earth for?”

“It’s a long st--”

“She was singing sad songs when he was already sad and drunk, and he took it as a personal affront,” Cassandra cut in.

“You _do_ realize that not every question requires a _fully_ honest answer, right Seeker?” Varric asked, looking amusedly at the glower she was receiving from Cullen.

“Coming from _you,_ that is an unsurprising sentiment,” she replied curtly, taking a sip from her mug.

Sensing awkwardness in the air from all directions, Krem cut in, changing the subject.

“Why don’t we play a game?” he asked. “A drinking game.”

“Oh boy,” said Bull, who had seen his fair share of these in the Chargers. “Hold on to your backsides, everyone. Which one do you have in mind, Krem de la Crème?”

“It’s called ‘Never Have I Ever,’” replied Krem, and Bull laughed.

“That’ll get this crowd blushing,” said the Qunari approvingly.

Krem explained the rules.

“I’ll start by making a statement that starts with ‘Never have I ever,’ and then if what I say is something you’ve done, you have to take a drink. For instance, ‘Never have I ever… killed a man.’” He looked expectantly around the table. “Well? Drink, you bastards!” 

Every mug lifted as the party all took a sip. Cullen’s was more like a swig, and Varric clapped him on the back.

“You’re gonna want to slow down there, Curly. Even a Chantry mouse like you is in trouble in a game like this.”

“My turn,” said Bull, thinking. “Hmm… Never have I ever kissed a man. With _tongue.”_

Everyone’s ales were raised except Krem, Varric, and Cullen. Bull looked at Sera as she took a drink, surprised.

“Wow. Now _that,_ I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“I experimented,” she said, shrugging.

“Okay, then,” he replied with a chuckle. “Your go, Varric.”

“All right. Never have I ever kissed a _woman_ with tongue.” This time, it was just Cassandra’s and Dorian’s mugs that stayed on the table. Cullen choked on his ale as he realized Freya was taking a drink.

“What?” he asked, coughing. _“Really?”_

Freya smirked and parroted Sera’s shrug. “I experimented.”

Sera giggled. “And?” she asked the Inquisitor, looking eager.

“I usually find myself gravitating toward men. But I could definitely see myself with a woman, under the right circumstances.”

Cullen was looking flabbergasted. 

“What _circumstances?”_ asked Sera, wiggling her eyebrows.

“Well, not being happily attached, for a start,” Freya answered, giving the Commander's hand a reassuring squeeze. “I believe it’s your turn, love.”

He regained his composure, still looking a bit stunned. Pursing his lips, he thought hard.

“Uh… hmmm. Well… Oh, I know. Never have I ever had dirty thoughts while in Chantry.” He took a drink, as did Dorian, Varric, Sera, and Krem. Cassandra put her chin on her fist, looking unimpressed.

Freya spoke up this time.

“Never have I ever fantasized about someone at this table.” All the glasses went up save for Varric and Cassandra’s this time.

“This is a boring game,” she huffed, leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest.

“I don’t think it’s the _game_ that’s boring, Seeker,” replied the dwarf, chuckling.

“My turn!” Dorian said, grinning. “Never have I ever... had sex in the back of a wagon.” A few mugs went up. Dorian eyed Freya as he made to take a sip.

 _“Aravels count,”_ he said, raising an eyebrow. Freya scoffed, rolling her eyes, and took a drink.

Sera was next.

“Never have I ever gotten a tattoo.” Only Freya and Krem raised their glasses.

“I didn’t know you had a tattoo, Krem,” said Bull, looking impressed.

“Well, it’s not in a place I generally show to just anyone,” he replied, shrugging. Bull chortled. 

Sera was eyeing Cullen. “You really haven’t got any, Cully?” she asked, then looked to Freya for confirmation. Freya shook her head. “Huh. I’d have expected a mabari on your arse, or something.”

Cassandra snorted. She looked around at the table, brightening. “My turn? Okay, I have a good one. Never have I ever subscribed to the _Randy Dowager.”_

Hers was the only mug lifted this time, and she reddened as the table erupted in laughter.

“Well,” said Cullen, chuckling. _“That_ backfired, didn’t it?”

 

By the time everyone had finished their third round of ale, the storm was really swirling outside, and Cabot announced that he would be closing early so everyone could make it back to the keep without getting buried. Freya thought this was rather a good idea, because after two more double shots of whisky on top of his ales, Cullen was having a hard time keeping upright.

“I’m _fiiiiine,”_ he insisted, tromping out the door into the storm. “I can walk by mysel--”

He tripped over his own feet and planted himself face-first into a drift of snow. Freya helped him up, shaking her head.

“Come on, Cullen. Up you get.”

They made their way slowly back to the castle, Bull supporting him under one arm while Freya staggered beneath the other one. They led him up to their chambers, and Cullen flopped down on the settee.

“I think I can take it from here,” said Freya, putting her hands on her hips and surveying her Commander, laying there in a heap. “Thanks, Bull.”

“No problem, Boss,” he replied.

“No prob’m, Boss!” Cullen repeated from the couch, giving a thumbs up. Chuckling, the Qunari turned to head back down the stairs. Freya sighed, kneeling in front of Cullen and unlacing his boots.

“Oh, I _do_ like when you undress me,” the Commander slurred, sitting up halfway. She looked back up at him with just her eyes, sliding one boot off. “D’you want to see how big my _sword_ is, m’lady?” 

Freya smirked, shaking her head.

“You,” she said, “are piss-drunk, my love.”

“No’m not,” he protested. “I’m just… _comfterrable.”_

“Say ‘comfortable,’ again?”

“Comfterrrable," he repeated with confidence.

“Exactly.”

She stood and held out her hand. Cullen pulled himself slowly off the couch, and Freya began undoing his mantle and unbuckling his armor.

“See? You can’t resist me,” he said, smirking. She tossed everything onto the sofa with a clank and grabbed the hem of his shirt, lifting it over his head.

“That’s right, _ma’nehn,”_ she said. “Your allure is _overpowering.”_

As soon as she’d removed his shirt, he bent down and gave her the sloppiest kiss she’d ever received. She fought hard not to laugh as he tried unsuccessfully to figure out where to angle his nose, covering her mouth with his and sliding his tongue messily through her lips.

She pushed him away gently after a brief moment, wiping her mouth a little. He fumbled with the cord of his pants, then dropped his trousers on the floor. He stood there naked, looking at her expectantly for a reaction.

“You’re a _god,”_ said Freya, wide-eyed and nodding emphatically. “A thing unfit for us mere mortals. Get into bed and you can show me what a gift you are unto this earth.”

Looking very pleased with himself, Cullen turned and hopped into bed, wriggling under the sheets and crossing his wrists behind his head. Freya went over to her side and began leisurely getting ready for bed, unpinning her braid and letting it fall down over one shoulder, then removing her boots and pants. When she’d finally gotten down to just her smalls, she crawled into bed and looked over at Cullen, who had turned away from her onto his side.

“Now, are you ready to show me that impressive _sword?”_ she asked, leaning over. He let out a loud snore in response, and she chuckled, nodding. “Thought so.”

  
_________________________

 

Groaning, Cullen pulled a pillow over his head. The bedroom was far too bright, and he felt like his head was going to explode. Freya was sitting on the sofa, reading her mother’s book and watching him reluctantly wake up. She concealed a smirk as he spoke up, his voice muffled.

“I feel like death.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Freya, standing up and laying the book aside. She crossed to her pitcher and poured him a big drink of cool water. He pulled the pillow off his head, leaving his curls rumpled and sticking out at odd angles. 

“What time is it?”

“Close to lunch time,” she answered, handing him the cup.

 _“Shit!”_ he said, sitting up too quickly. The room spun. “I've missed drills!”

“Saturday, love,” she responded, fluffing up his pillows so he could sit up against the headboard. “No drills on the weekend.”

He visibly relaxed at this, then pulled a face, putting a hand to his stomach.

“Ugh. I think I may be sick.”

“You already were," she told him. "Three times. I doubt there’s much left.”

“Oh, Freya, I’m sorry,” he said, looking embarrassed. “Maker, I don’t even _remember_ that. I’ll get the chamber pot taken care of as soon as I can get out of bed.”

“Already done,” she replied. He gave her a grateful smile.

“How is it I’m able to convince you to put up with me, again?” he asked, taking a sip of water. 

“Helps that you’re cute,” she responded, shrugging. She got up and went back to the sofa again, picking up the book and sitting down with her legs crossed on the seat.

“I really am sorry for overdoing it,” Cullen said. “It’s just been such a hard month with everything that happened, and now this mess with the Orlesians coming. I guess I just wanted to get away from it all, and I… got a little carried away.” 

“Happens to the best of us,” she replied, smiling gently at him. “No need to apologize.”

Taking another sip, Cullen tried to remember what he could of the previous night. Krem's game in the tavern had led to a lot of surprises. 

“Did you really kiss another woman?” he asked, recalling that particular confession.

 _More serious than just a kiss, and more than just one woman,_ thought Freya to herself. She grinned, deciding not to elaborate this time.

“Yes,” she answered simply. “Does that bother you?” 

“No,” he replied. “I knew you weren’t a blushing virgin or anything. It was just surprising, that’s all. I guess we haven’t really discussed our previous… _relationships.”_

“Well, there’s really no need to. I don’t care who you were with before Haven.”

“Mine would've been a boring story, anyway,” Cullen said, massaging his temples. “Nothing in the back of an _aravel_ , for instance.”

Freya smirked.

“Young people who think they're in love do a lot of ridiculous things.”

“Was this the girl, or…?”

“No, that was before this. The aravel was Dhavi, our halla keeper’s son. We were sort of an item for awhile.”

“Were you still… when you went to the Conclave?" 

“No,” said Freya quietly, a small note of sadness in her voice. “Dhavi died a long time before the Conclave, when I was twenty-three. There was a terrible sickness in our camp that summer and he… didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Cullen, looking genuinely so.

“I am, too,” she replied. “He was a good man. _Terrible_ kisser, though.”

“Speaking of… did I... _try_ anything with you last night? I feel like I remember kissing you.”

“You did,” she answered, chuckling. “It was very… wet. And then you tried really hard to seduce me, and promptly fell asleep.”

“Maker,” said Cullen, leaning back with his eyes to the ceiling and flushing a deep red. “I keep telling myself that someday I’ll quit making an ass of myself in front of you, but it’s really not looking good, is it?”

Freya laughed, flipping through pages in her book. She paused on a page describing her youngest brother’s birth for a moment, tracing her fingers over the words.

“Cullen,” she said, breaking the silence after a bit. “I think I’ve made a decision.”

“No more ale for me, on the Inquisitor’s orders? Because if that’s what it is, I agree.”

“No, not that,” she answered, grinning. “It’s about my clan’s things. I think… I think I’m _ready.”_

Looking up at her, Cullen raised his eyebrows.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“I am. I’d like to go start on it today, I think, since we have a couple of days off from meetings. And if you’re feeling up to it, I think I’d like you to be with me.”

“Of course,” said Cullen, sitting up fully. The room had mostly stopped spinning, and he thought he could probably rally himself enough to get out of the bed. "Whatever you need from me."

“First things first, though,” said Freya, looking at the indentations on his cheek from the pillow and his messy hair. “You need food. And a comb.”


	16. Banal'halam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Honey pick a blossom_   
>  _and hold it,_   
>  _hold it to your breast._
> 
> _Honey, you know that's my love_   
>  _bursting loud from inside._
> 
> _My love,_   
>  _oh my love,_   
>  _my love will never die._
> 
> _\--Hozier, "My Love Will Never Die"_

Little specks of dust floated down like snowflakes, caught in the beams of afternoon light pouring through the windows of the empty tower where all the clan’s things had been stored. Crates lined the walls, overflowing with a variety of items. Going through them was, for the most part, easier than Freya had expected.

Most of them were the mundane sorts of things you’d find at any general purpose merchant: cooking vessels and utensils, rope, bottles of oils and toiletry items, tools. Things that weren’t practical for her to keep, however sentimental she might feel about even the most common hammer or skillet, but they could easily be used by the Inquisition, or given away to people who needed them. Freya had made a large pile of the clothes, enough to outfit a small army of elves. She intended to donate them to the Skyhold staff and then send along whatever wasn’t needed to a nearby alienage. The tools were in another pile, ready to send out to various camps and building sites where her men could make use of them once winter passed.

The descriptions of the Lavellan elves, though, were harder for her to deal with, seeing the people she’d known and loved reduced to a few apathetic sentences.

_Older woman, grey hair, blue eyes. Light skinned. Tattoos like branches of a tree extending from chin to forehead and around eyes. Likely a mage. Wearing carved wooden ring, carrying staff. Suspected belongings moved to Crate 6._

Keeper Deshanna’s face appeared in Freya’s mind. They had been related by blood, she knew, though it was several times removed and she wasn’t certain exactly where she’d have fallen on her mother’s family tree. No mention in this report of her kind heart, of the way she would conjure brightly colored balls of light to float in the air to entertain the clan’s children, or of how she would always shoot a shower of white sparks high in the air above the trees to celebrate the birth of a new baby. There was no way the person writing this could have known how thin her mouth would go when she caught you engaging in mischief, or the way she would cross her arms and scold her First when it was obvious she hadn’t been practicing as she was supposed to.

_Middle-aged man. Dusty blonde hair, brown eyes. Very tanned. Tattoos like antlers across forehead. Simple garments. Belongings in Crate 3._

Alhannon, Dhavi’s father, the man who looked after the clan’s herd of halla. A more patient person, she had never known. Freya had so many fond memories of breaking bread with their family, and she had thought for a time that this might even be her father-in-law someday. His wife, Rosha, was described here, too. They had died side-by-side, it seemed, four years after losing their only child to that terrible fever.

_Younger woman. Black hair, blue eyes. Very light skin. Tattoos are criss-crossing lines across the forehead, extending down the cheeks. Likely a mage, found in possession of a staff. Belongings in Crate 5._

This was Isene, Deshanna’s First. Her name meant 'fire,' and it was as apt a name as there ever was. People liked to describe Freya as feisty, but compared to Isene, she was downright demure. She had also been another of the clan’s highly gifted dancers, and during celebrations she had performed with Freya. She had always been a little stiff in her movements, and Freya often had to remind her to point her toes. She’d loved Lailani's wildberry tarts more than just about anything on the planet, and as children she and Freya would frequently sneak one off to the woods to share, hiding and giggling over their small act of rebellion as they devoured their bounty.

Freya went through the reports slowly, allowing the memories to come and giving herself permission to feel the flood of emotions freely as she went through each person’s belongings, setting aside a few things to keep. And then, she found the descriptions she had been both hoping for and dreading, all at once:

_Young man. Dark brown hair, hazel eyes. Freckled skin. No tattoos. Wearing simple clothing and necklace with silver animal pendant. Found next to male child with curly red hair, brown eyes, freckles. No tattoos, simple clothing. Belongings for both in Crate 11. Found behind aravel, contents in Crate 12._

“Cullen,” she called out, her voice creaky from a long period of silence, “do you see a crate marked with the number eleven?”

He jumped a bit at the sound. Freya had been quiet for most of the afternoon, speaking only when it was necessary. Squinting, he looked down at the crates that surrounded the area where he’d been examining weapons.

“No, I don-- Oh, actually, yes. It’s right here. It's stacked underneath another one.”

Freya was next to him in seconds, yanking the crate on top aside and kneeling down.

"Not much there," said Cullen, looking over her shoulder.

Inside were two pairs of shoes, a little toy slingshot, a hunting knife, and a black leather cord with a small silver figure hanging on it.

“Aron and Sal,” she said quietly, looking into the crate. He knelt down next to her. One of the shoes had a tiny splatter of blood on it. She picked it up and looked at it, brushing her fingertip over the dark stain. “ _Isa’ma’lin,_ ‘his blood is my blood.’ Our word for ‘brother.’”

Sniffling softly, she dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her tunic. Cullen rubbed her back gently. She took out the slingshot, a small smile curling her lips.

“Sal got this one spring, a couple of years ago. The number of little pebbles he fired at my backside with this thing, that scamp. I can’t recall who gave it to him, but my _mamae_ wanted to wring their necks.”

She set it down, then reached in and picked up the knife. The blade had a small crust of blood still clinging to it.

“Aron’s hunting knife,” she said, looking at it. “He kept this impeccably clean, always wiped it down and washed it after he skinned an animal. This blood must have been from… He must have tried to fight back.”

She held it in her hands for a moment, running her thumb up and down the leather grip.

 _“Ma’deal rogasha, Aronhalaan,”_ she said quietly, before setting it aside. She picked the necklace up and held it out to show Cullen.

“It’s a halla,” he said with a smile, cupping the little pendant in his hands. “Which brother did that belong to?”

“Aron,” she answered. “His birthday present from me when he turned sixteen. He wore it everywhere. Aron was to begin training as a halla keeper’s apprentice next summer. After Dhavi died, his father needed someone else to teach, and Aron was always so fond of the halla, so he asked to take on the responsibility.”

She paused, furrowing her brow.

“I wonder what happened to the herd,” she said, looking up at Cullen. “Was there any mention...?”

Cullen shook his head.

“No, nothing.”

“Maybe they got away, and they’re running free somewhere in the woods up there. Most of them could probably get along. Falon’s probably wolf meat by now, though. He was spoiled and close to useless. Aron’s favorite. He used to sneak him cornbread and bowls of cream. You wouldn’t think halla could get fat, but he was getting quite the belly on him when I left for Conclave.”

Freya was smiling broadly now, looking down at the little silver halla. She set it on top of the small pile of things to keep for herself and looked up. Cullen was looking at the list of descriptions again.

“Freya, that crate you moved. Was it number twelve?”

She looked at the number stamped on the wood. “It was. Why?”

Cullen scooted over to it and peered inside. “Did you read the end of your brothers’ description? About the aravel?”

Freya held out her hand for the paper. He handed it to her and she scanned, looking for her brothers again. “I skimmed it, but it didn’t stick. I was too distracted by the idea of seeing their things.”

_Found behind aravel--contents in Crate 12._

“Behind an aravel… I wonder if…?” She looked into the crate. Glass bottles of varying sizes and descriptions had been wrapped in paper and tucked in on top of a pile of garments. Freya unwrapped one and read the label, written in her mother’s hand:  _Sul Asha’Nu._

“It _was_ our aravel. This came from my _mamae’s_ potion kit.”

She and Cullen began taking out the bottles one by one, carefully unwrapping them. Her mother’s neat writing described the contents of each, everything from simple elfroot potion to cures for boils and rashes. Cullen recognized the bright green color of the stinging wound cleanser in one small vial, and another larger bottle full of the fever potion. Underneath all these was a small stack of clothing--a few simple tunics, another more elegant one with beautiful embroidery around the collar, and a long-sleeved dress in a pale, flowing sage green fabric.

“Oh, _mamae’s_ gown,” she breathed, picking it up and holding it to her chest. “We all had one special garment, for ceremonies and the like. She insisted I bring mine to the Conclave, in case I needed it. No doubt it’s ashes by now. I always liked hers better, anyway."

“It’s stunning,” said Cullen. He gazed admiringly at her. The color of the dress set off her eyes marvelously, and he could only imagine how beautiful it would look on her. He would have to think of a good reason to treat her to something soon, he decided, give her an excuse to put it on.

She laid it gently aside and looked at the books that lined the bottom of the crate. Most of them were about potions and healing techniques, and a couple were traditional elvhen stories for children. There was also a book on the Evanuri, and one on midwifery.

Freya began to put all her family's things back into the crate.

“I think I’ll keep all of this,” she said.

He nodded.

“I think you should.”

She and Cullen re-wrapped the potions in the paper, packing them neatly on top of the clothing.

They stayed late into the evening, going through the remaining boxes. Freya was no longer silent as she worked, sharing her memories with him as they came to mind. When they had finally gotten to the bottom of the last crate, she surveyed their work.

Everything that was left of her clan was here, sorted neatly into piles. Her people were gone, but their bows and staffs and daggers would go on to help the Inquisition in their fight against Corypheus. Their shirts would cover the backs of city elves who perhaps wouldn’t otherwise have a change of clothes. Their tools would build and fortify shelters for their army.

“The Dalish have a word for this,” Freya said as she looked around the room. _“Banal’halam.”_

“What does it mean?” asked Cullen, walking up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist.

“It means that we’re all immortal, in a way. Our bodies die, but that’s just a tiny part of who we are, really. Even if we don’t go on to have ballads written about our deeds, we leave things behind. Physical things like these, and memories in the hearts and minds of the people that loved us, taken with them through time. Nothing ever really ends.”

Cullen kissed her temple. “I like that idea.”

She turned around and hugged him close for several moments, a welcome feeling of serenity covering her heart like a warm blanket as she stood there in his arms.

“Are you okay?” he asked her as she pulled away, smoothing her hair.

“You know... I think I _am._ I needed this. I needed to see what was left, and sort it all. Not just into piles, but in my mind, as well. Thank you for being here with me, _ma'nehn_.” She squeezed his hand. “I hope this wasn’t too hard for _you._ I almost didn’t ask, honestly. I was afraid it would remind you of the original accounts again. You’ve been doing so much better lately.”

Cullen shook his head.

“I’ll be fine, Freya. Don’t worry about that.”

“You _always_ say that.”

“Yes, but this time it’s actually true. In a funny way, I think these last few weeks have been almost _good_ for us. I’m starting to let things go, you’re finally feeling a little more at peace with all of this. We’re learning to open up more, to lean on one another when we need to. And we’re going to have to do that more and more, I expect. Nothing is going to get much easier until we win this war.”

He looked down at her, his expression serious.

“I’ve been mulling it over a lot, Freya, and I think that once the Orlesians leave, we should consider making our move at Emprise du Lion.”

“You’re the military mastermind, Cullen _,”_ she said, shrugging. “If that’s where you want to send me, you know I’m willing.”

He shook his head.

“No. I’m not sending you into a den of Red Templars alone, not after everything we’ve seen. If you head for the Emprise, I’m coming along with you.” He gave her a small grin. “Besides, I’ve gotten used to sleeping next to you every night. I’m like your brother’s fat halla. You can’t take away my bowl of cream just yet.”

Freya laughed, and he gave her a light kiss on the lips.

“I expect dinner is just about ready,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I could eat a bronto.”

Freya nodded, still smiling, and they extinguished the sconces on the walls and got their cloaks. They turned to leave, Cullen holding the crate of her belongings. As she headed out into the gently falling snow, she took one last look around at all of the piles silhouetted in the dim evening light, the stuff of everyday life left behind by her people, off to far corners of Thedas to be useful once again. She felt a slight pang of regret at letting it all go, but words from Keeper Deshanna’s last letter floated into her mind.

  
_Live well, da'len. You carry Clan Lavellan with you._

 

 _“En’an’sal’shiral, lethal’inen,”_ she said, and she closed the door quietly behind her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
>  _“Ma’deal rogasha, Aronhalaan.”_  
>  You were brave, Aronhalaan.
> 
>  _“En’an’sal’shiral, lethal’inen.”_  
>  Blessed journey, dear friends.


End file.
